The quarter final line up at the cinch Championships will be finalised on Thursday when the last four matches in the second round are played out on the Centre Court at the Queens Club in London, assuming the storms stay away.
We’ve already seen one former champion and two Brits make it through to the last eight and on Thursday another couple of Brits and the defending champion are among those on a decent Thursday card in London.
Day 3 Recap
It was a pretty mundane day at the Queens Club on Wednesday with all four matches ending in straight sets. That started with Alex de Minaur overcoming his Davis Cup teammate John Millman before Cameron Norrie was the first British player to win through when he defeated Aslan Karatsev before the Jack Draper run continued with a good win over Alexander Bublik. Marin Cilic made it through to the quarter finals in the last match of the day when he saw off Fabio Fognini.
It wasn’t a good day for our bet on Wednesday though. To be fair it looked in good order when Norrie took the first set 7-5 and a repeat of that would have been enough to see the bet land but then Karatsev started losing his feet and once he went over a couple of times he lost the motivation for the job so that leaves us needing to turn the ship around over the remainder of the week.
Adrian Mannarino vs Dan Evans
The opening match of the day sees the underrated Adrian Mannarino taking on a Dan Evans whose record on the grass isn’t anything like as strong as it might otherwise be, although he has the chance to put that right this week.
On grass court pedigree you could easily make Mannarino the favourite for this match but prior to his win over Liam Broady in the first round here he had lost his last four grass court matches. I don’t think this is the best surface for Evans but he has won a lot of matches over the last 18 months or so and will fancy the job and will have the home crowd on his side as well which might help him in the tight moments. That is all enough to put me off taking the Frenchman in this one.
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Matteo Berrettini vs Andy Murray
The second match of the day is probably the biggest one, certainly for the home fans in attendance when Andy Murray continues his latest comeback against the number one seed Matteo Berrettini in a real clash of styles.
Berrettini has all the weapons to be a good grass court player but at the same time conditions might be a little greasy here and he is a big boy so he could be a little tentative here which isn’t going to serve him all that well. The other problem that Berrettini has is his weapons are likely to nullified by Murray if he comes on for the run from his opening game. The strength of the Italian is the first serve and Murray is as good a returner as there has been in the game and in the baseline rallies the Brit should win more than his fair share. Given that Berrettini might be a little suspect movement wise I think it is worth chancing Murray to pull off another win here.
Feliciano Lopez vs Denis Shapovalov
The penultimate match in the second round sees the defending champion taking on the second seed when Feliciano Lopez goes up against the exciting Canadian player Denis Shapovalov for a place in the quarter finals on Friday.
This is the second week in succession that they will meet after Shapovalov edged out the Spaniard in three sets in Stuttgart last week. Lopez will fancy his chances of overturning that loss on one of his favourite courts in the world while Shapovalov rarely puts grass court wins together and wasn’t overly impressive against a qualifier in the opening match of the tournament. If I wasn’t on Lopez outright I might have chanced him here but because I am, and because there isn’t another seed in this half of the draw should Lopez come through, I will use that as my interest in this game.
Viktor Troicki vs Frances Tiafoe
The last of the second round matches sees the Serbian qualifier Viktor Troicki looking to continue something of a revival this week. He takes on the American player Frances Tiafoe who will probably fancy the job here and who tends to get inspired on the bigger courts.
Troicki did us a turn on the opening day of the tournament when he took care of Lorenzo Sonego and if he serves as well here as he did then he has a chance but Tiafoe moves a lot better than Sonego and has more of an all-round game about him so I think this will be a tougher assignment for the Serbian. 2/1 tempts me but the same concerns I have with Berrettini earlier in the day are prevalent in this match so I’ll sit this one out.
Tips
Back A.Murray to beat M.Berrettini for a 3/10 stake at 3.20 with Bet365
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