Gasquet needing to roll back the years to defeat Nadal
September 15th, 2003, was the first time Richard Gasquet faced Rafa Nadal, and the only time in a ranking tournament that he has recorded a victory. Since then, Nadal has reeled off 17 victories in a row against the veteran Frenchman, although they've met just once in the last four years.
Nadal being priced up at 1.071/14 for tonight's match between the duo really isn't much of a shock.
That's the only meeting today which has a hugely strong pre-match favourite, so there should be some decent competitive action today in New York with players bidding to join last night's winners in round four.
Cilic a little short versus Evans
There's British interest in the form of Cameron Norrie, who is a solid favourite to get past the Dane, Holger Rune, while Dan Evans is underdog at 2.568/5 for his clash with Marin Cilic.
Both players haven't had much difficulty in getting to this stage right now, and it's rather a clash of styles between Cilic's stronger serve and Evans' better return game. I make Cilic the favourite, but the market price looks a little on the short side in my view.
Priced around the 1.51/2 to 1.68/13 mark are both Ilya Ivaskha, against Lorenzo Musetti, and Andrey Rublev against Denis Shapovalov.
Based on hard court data, both prices look broadly correct, although I did think Rublev would be priced at a higher mark than this line against Shapovalov (because I thought he'd be undervalued by the market after an inconsistent few months). However, as is often the case, the Exchange is pretty accurate in pricing up meetings between two players with pretty exposed ability levels.
Schwartzman can succeed where Kubler failed
Despite that, the one spot I don't mind is Diego Schwartzman priced up as a pretty heavy underdog at 3.02/1 for his clash with Frances Tiafoe.
This is a similar line to Jason Kubler against Tiafoe on Thursday, which I also thought was some value, but Tiafoe won a very tight three-setter.
In that match, Kubler still won 47% of points - very high for a 0-3 defeat - and it could have been a different story if the Australian didn't go 2/10 on break points as well. This, interestingly, was a very similar dynamic to Schwartzman's win over Alexei Popyrin in round two as well.
As is usually the case with Schwartzman's matches, the playing style of the duo are rather different.
Schwartzman's weak serve but ultra-strong return game matches up against the stronger serve but weaker return of the opposition, and combining the two, there's not much to be said for Tiafoe being anything shorter than 1.84/5. He's much shorter than this today, so Schwartzman is today's pick.