The opening day of the Fever-Tree Championships at the Queens Club in London is a relatively quiet one on Monday. One of the beauties of only having 32 players in the draw is the first round doesn’t take forever to conclude which is why there are only six singles matches on the schedule to kick things off.
There might be a shortage of matches but there isn’t a lack of big names with the defending champion Marin Cilic and the Wimbledon finalist Kevin Anderson both on the cast list on Monday. A duo of British players are on court too in Cameron Norrie and James Ward.
Centre Court
There is quite an entertaining looking match to get the four matches on the Centre Court underway on Monday as our pre-tournament pick Fernando Verdasco takes on the fiery Russian player Daniil Medvedev. When they are done it will be the turn of the defending champion Marin Cilic to begin his title defence when he faces the rapidly improving Cristan Garin. Kevin Anderson then makes his return from injury with a clash against the British player Cameron Norrie before the other British player rounds off the day when James Ward meets Gilles Simon.
Court 1
The singles action isn’t restricted to the main court. There are two matches on the second court too. The first of those sees Diego Schwartzman taking on the qualifier Alexander Bublik in what is a right banana skin for the more established player. There is another qualifier in action in the other match as Nicolas Mahut goes up against Frances Tiafoe in what should be one of the matches of the day across the entire Queens Club.
Betting
I’ll ease my way into the grass court season with just the one bet which comes in that second match out on Court 1 where I’m expecting plenty of games between two pretty decent servers in Nicolas Mahut and Frances Tiafoe. We know all about the serving exploits of Mahut after that epic encounter with John Isner all those years ago and I fancy service breaks will be few and far between here.
Tiafoe is probably the better of the two off the ground but Mahut’s serve is going to be hard to get hold of on these courts so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple of tiebreaks here. We have a game line of 23.5 which will be obliterated with a third set but there are plenty of reasons to think this one can be covered in two sets should the Frenchman serve well, which he has obviously been doing to qualify for this tournament. Overs for me.
Tips
Back N.Mahut vs F.Tiafoe – Over 23.5 games for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with 888sport
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