The first day of action in the ATP Miami main draw takes place around the grounds at the Hard Rock Stadium on Wednesday and sees plenty of action in the opening round taking place as we head towards the big guns entering the fray over the weekend.
There is a real open feel to this tournament without any of the big three in the competition so all the players in action on Wednesday will be hoping to get a run going and set themselves up nicely from a ranking point of view.
Grandstand
There is no Stadium Court at Miami this year so the main court is the Grandstand one. The action on this court begins with a women’s match and then when they are done a couple of American veterans will look to make sufficient progress. Sam Querrey is the first of those. He meets Yen-Hsun Lu before Steve Johnson takes on Yannick Hanfmann in the match which rounds off the day session on this court to start off with. We have a night session on this court too which begins with a women’s match and then another American player will look to make progress when Frances Tiafoe takes on Stefano Travaglia who had a decent run in one of the warm up events prior to the Australian Open.
Court 1
Feliciano Lopez is the headline attraction in the opening match on Court 1 on Wednesday. He faces the Australian player Alexei Popyrin in what is a bit of a bad draw for both men. Two American players then battle it out when they are done as Marcos Giron meets Tommy Paul before James Duckworth goes up against Mischa Zverev who came through qualifying nicely enough. Another qualifier is in action in the penultimate match of the day on this second court when Mackenzie McDonald, the man who ended the hopes of Ivo Karlovic on Tuesday, meets another big server in Vasek Pospisil. The final match of the on this course sees the wildcard Carlos Alcaraz facing the Finland number one Emil Ruusuvuori.
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Best of the Rest
There are only another two courts in action in the men’s draw on Wednesday and bigger names are few and far between although the Dubai finalist Lloyd Harris is one name to keep an eye on. British eyes will be on Court Two as well as Cameron Norrie opens up the show on that court when he meets Yoshihito Nishioka. Dominik Koepferand Paolo Lorenzi are just a couple of the other players who catch the eye on the outside courts on Wednesday.
Betting
I like a couple of bets over the course of Wednesday. The first of them comes in the American clash on Court 1 where Marcos Giron feels like a big price against Tommy Paul. This pair have met three times and Giron has won two of them. All three matches were on an American hard court so that feels pretty relevant. Paul has been sufficient this season without doing anything out of the ordinary but you sense he is gearing up for the clay season to come where he is much more comfortable. Giron had a couple of decent wins in Melbourne and ran Alexander Zverev close in the Australian Open. He also ran Andrey Rublev close in Rotterdam recently and ended last season with hard court wins over David Goffin and Matteo Berrettini. I don’t think Giron is without a chance here so will take him at the prices.
The other bet I like is for Lloyd Harris to keep up his fine form when he takes on the qualifier Emilio Nava. Harris made it all the way to the final of Dubai last week with an appealing straight sets win over Dominic Thiem along the way as well as victories over Filip Krajinovic, Kei Nishikori and Denis Shapovalov before going down to Aslan Karatsev in the final. The week before that he took care of Stan Wawrinka in Qatar so Harris looks in excellent touch. Nava has been doing well in the very lower level clay events and to his credit he has made it into the main draw here but other than knowledge of conditions I don’t really see what advantage he has here. I expect the South African to comfortably take care of the youngster.
Tips
WON – Back M.Giron to beat T.Paul for a 3/10 stake at 2.38 with Betfair
Back him here:
Back L.Harris (-4.5 games) to beat E.Nava for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Coral
Back him here:
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