We were rather unlucky on Monday when Prajnesh Gunneswaran failed to win the opening set against Daniel Altmaier in Pune from twice a break up and 4-2 up in the ensuing tie break.
Had Gunneswaran taken that set it would have been tough for Altmaier to come back in the heat.
Then, we got a nice price on Yannick Hanfmann, who started his match against Juan Ignacio Londero at around 1.75/7 from 2.26/5 but was beaten by the best performance that Londero has delivered for a long time.
There's a distinctly Gallic theme to Tuesday's play in Montpellier, with all five matches (including the doubles) on Centre Court featuring at least one Frenchman and I don't mind taking a chance on one of them as underdog today.
Hugo Gaston showed what he is capable of doing on indoor hard at the end of last season when he made the quarter finals of the Paris Masters on home soil and did well in defeat to Daniil Medvedev in the last eight.
He beat Rinderknech, Carreno Busta and Alcaraz that week and I wonder if his unorthodox style of play will upset the rhythm of Soonwoo Kwon who doesn't have the sort of game to blow Gaston off court with.
Gaston is sure to be highly motivated playing at home and Kwon might be better at redirecting pace than creating it himself, which will make this an interesting test for Kwon.
The Korean doesn't have the strongest serve, so Gaston, who's won 38% of return points in the last 12 months at main level should be in a lot of the Kwon service games and you feel that Kwon will have to play his best stuff to win this one.
Gaston won as underdog at main level nine times in 15 matches in 2021 so he's often been underrated by the layers and against the inconsistent Kwon I don't mind taking him as underdog again at around 2.3811/8.
Elsewhere in Montpellier I was hoping for a bigger price on Kasper Zuk against the fading Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, but I can't back him at 1.84/5, however I'll take a chance on the streaky Peter Gojowczyk at a nice price.
There aren't many streakier players around than Gojowczyk, who's currently on one of his losing runs (lost his last seven) and prior to that made the last-16 of the US Open as a qualifier then the semis in Metz (winning 10 out of 12).
He's got a great record indoors in France, has a better service hold/break total than Herbert indoors at main level over the last two years and enjoys facing big servers.
Gojowczyk has won 10 of 16 matches, held serve 81% of the time and broken 26% of the time since the start of 2020 on indoor hard at main level (107 total) and won 80% of his first serve points.
He's 15-8 win/loss at main level indoors in France losing only to Roberto Bautista Agut, Dominic Thiem, Kei Nishikori, Gilles Simon, Filip Krajinovic, Hubert Hurkacz and one end-of-season defeat to Damir Dzumhur.
He looked exhausted after the US Open and Metz runs and it would be no surprise if he bounced back to form indoors in France.
Herbert has been struggling after a bout of Covid and wasn't impressive in qualifying, so I'm happy with the price of around 2.747/4 on Gojowczyk.
Plenty of evenly balanced matches at ATP Cordoba
Moving on to Cordoba and Federico Coria will be reasonably pleased that the qualifier he'll face in the opening round is Juan Pablo Ficovich - and probably a fatigued Ficovich at that.
Coria has beaten his fellow countryman nine times from 10 meetings, but Ficovich did win the most recent one, which took place two years ago at the Punta Del Este Challenger.
Ficovich had to come from a set down to beat Dmitry Popko and from 1-3 down in the final set to edge out Nikola Milojevic in qualies and it took him more than five hours on court to scrap his way to the main draw.
Ficovich has only played one main level match in his career (here two years ago when he lost to Gianluca Mager) and he's held serve against Coria only 54% of the time, so it's hard to have much confidence in him today.
Daniel Elahi Galan has a comfortably better record on clay at main level than his opponent today Hugo Dellien and the former also defeated the latter at the Concepcion Challenger a week or so ago (Galan went on to win the title that week).
Overall, Galan is 9-7 win/loss at this level on clay, while Dellien is 12-19 and it's Galan that leads the way in terms of first and second serve points won and service holds, while only being 1% worse off than Dellien on return points won.
Galan was a 2.59159/100 chance when he beat Dellien in Concepcion though and their head-to-head stats show that in their two career meetings (1-1 overall) it's Dellien whose numbers are better.
Galan has held serve only 60% of the time against Dellien, who in turn has held 68% of the time against Galan, who just edged it in that Concepcion Challenger match, despite winning three fewer points than his opponent.
Galan was priced up as a 2.71171/100 chance and then as a 2.59159/100 shot in his two priors with Dellien, so at around 1.9010/11 today I'm not seeing any value.
There's 17 years between Sebastian Baez and Fernando Verdasco and at the moment the gap between them in tennis terms is pretty big, too.
Verdasco is surely at the end of his career now and has gone 4-4 win/loss in clay Challengers this past year, while Baez has gone 44-7 with a service hold/break total of 119, which is superb.
It's difficult to see Verdasco winning that one, but qualifier Alejandro Tabilo has a decent chance of taking down last week's Santa Cruz de la Sierra Challenger winner Francisco Cerundolo.
The Argentine played some tough matches in Bolivia last week (13 sets in all) and only won the title there on Sunday, so it's a quick turnaround and Tabilo should have a better feel for the conditions, having made it through qualies in Cordoba a few days ago.
That said, Cerundolo has the better stats at Challenger level and he beat Tabilo easily in both of their prior career meetings, the last of which was Concepcion Challenger a year ago when Tabilo was a 2.61161/100 underdog.
The Chilean has shown improvement lately but the price of 2.206/5 is maybe a little short this time on Tabilo.
Tomas Martin Etcheverry beat Nicolas Jarry as a 2.186/5 underdog only 10 weeks ago at the Campinas Challenger in Brazil at around 700m of altitude, so he might well fancy his chances again here in Cordoba.
And now that high seed in the bottom half of the draw, Dominic Thiem, has withdrawn from the tournament both Etcheverry and Jarry have an opportunity to make at least the quarters, with Nikola Milojevic coming in as a lucky loser to take Thiem's spot.
Etcheverry was clearly the better player against Jarry in Campinas, winning a stellar 71% of his second serve points that day and ahead in all other departments as well, but Jarry had a poor serving day.
If we take the stats from July 1, 2021 to the present day at Challenger level on clay we see that Jarry has held serve an impressive 86% of the time, but broken serve only 20% of the time, while Etcheverry's stats are more return-oriented.
Etcheverry has held 78% of the time and broken 33% of the time, so this looks set to be classic clash between the serving of Jarry and returning of Etcheverry.
Slight edge goes to the Argentine, but it's actually Jarry that's won a higher percentage of points on return than Etcheverry - 53% to 51%.
Jarry served at just 54% when he lost to Etcheverry in Campinas, while his Challenger average for the last seven months is 63% so if Jarry serves well on the day he could very well turn that result around.
Albert Ramos rarely loses matches he's meant to win on clay as his record of 45-3 win/loss when priced up as a 1.392/5 or shorter favourite at main level shows, so I won't be taking him on with Andrej Martin.
Carlos Taberner has shown good form in the last season or so, but he's still to convince at main level, with a 3-5 win/loss mark in the last 12 months on clay, while Federico Delbonis' stats are still very good.
Delbonis is 23-13 win/loss in the last 12 months at main level on the dirt, with a combined service hold/break total of 106, so he looks the right favourite for that one playing at home in Argentina, too.
So, nothing stands out in Cordoba and I'll take two underdogs in Montpellier today for one point each.