The year long ATP Tour comes to a close this week with the 2021 Nitto ATP World Tour Finals, which moves away from the o2 Arena in London for the first time in more than a decade, with Turin in Italy picking up the baton to stage the tournament.
Daniil Medvedev won the final staging of the tournament inside the o2 Arena last year but he won it without a crowd in attendance. There will be fans in place for his title defence and he has qualified to try and keep hold of the title.
Recent Winners
2020 – Daniil Medvedev
2019 – Stefanos Tsitsipas
2018 – Alexander Zverev
2017 – Grigor Dimitrov
2016 – Andy Murray
2015 – Novak Djokovic
2014 – Novak Djokovic
2013 – Novak Djokovic
2012 – Novak Djokovic
2011 – Roger Federer
The Format
We have already had the draw for the singles and doubles events which have seen the eight players and teams put into two groups of four for the opening round. That sees each player or pair playing the other three in their group. At the end of that stage the top two in each group move into the semi-finals where the winner of one group plays the runner up of the other one. The two winning semi-finalists meet in the final for the title on the second Sunday of the event. Each singles match is the best of three sets with a tiebreak in the decider while the doubles are the best of three sets with the third set being a match tiebreak.
Green Group
Novak Djokovic has already secured the world number one spot at the end of the year and as such he is the top seed in the draw this week and the head honcho in the Green Group. The five time champion of this event will be looking to emulate Roger Federer with a sixth title here and on the face of it he probably couldn’t have picked a nicer group. 2019 champion Stefanos Tsitsipas is the second highest seed in the group but he pulled out of the Paris Masters the week before last with an injury which is a concern. Andrey Rublev began the year in good touch but the longer it has gone on the weaker his form has got. He is the third highest seed in this group with the quartet being made up by one of the two debutants in Casper Ruud, who has been in excellent touch since Wimbledon.
Red Group
The defending champion Daniil Medvedev is the star act in the Red Group this week. The US Open champion has looked full of class throughout the year and could easily have had a second Grand Slam crown to his name having lost out in the final in Melbourne at the start of the season. He has landed himself in much the tougher looking of the two groups here though. That is because the second seed in this section is the Olympic champion Alexander Zverev, who has enjoyed a wonderful second part of the campaign. Matteo Berrettini led Novak Djokovic by a set in the Wimbledon final four months ago and he’ll be looking to use the home crowd to his advantage last week, while the other debutant completes the group in Hubert Hurkacz, the Miami Open champion and winner of two other titles on the season.
Doubles
One of the features of this tournament is the fact that the doubles gets played out alongside the singles and the doubles this year looks as strong as ever. We don’t have the defending champions in the field though so we are guaranteed a different winner from last year. Comfortably the team of the year have been the Olympic winning Croatian pair of Mate Pavic and Nikola Mektic but number one seeds haven’t won this event since the Bryan brothers landed the title back in 2014. Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury have been here before without much success but as the number two seeds courtesy of winning the US Open and making the final of the Australian Open they will be looking to win this title for the first time.
In truth, those two teams are a country mile clear in the rankings, although five of the eight teams have played significantly fewer events than those pairs. The third seeds this week will be the 2019 winners of this tournament, the French Open winning pair of Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert. Fourth seeds are Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos with the Colombian duo of Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal the fifth seeds. The field is completed by Ivan Dodig and Filip Polasek, Bruno Soares and Jamie Murray and the last pair in Kevin Krawietz and Horia Tecau.
Special Offer
OPEN AN ACCOUNT WITH 888SPORT AND BET £10 TO GET £30 IN FREE BETS PLUS A £10 CASINO BONUS! PERFECT OFFER TO USE ON THIS TOURNAMENT! CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO JOIN. USE CODE 30F. NEW ACCOUNTS ONLY. 18+ T&Cs apply (See image for significant terms). Gamble Aware.
Singles Betting
There are always two ways to go at the singles betting in this tournament. The first way is to chance someone coming out of the tougher group and getting the easier semi-final or to take someone who is more likely to come out of the easier group and hope he gets lucky in the last four to get an each way payout. I’m choosing the latter this year because a player could come out of the harder group and run into Novak Djokovic which certainly wouldn’t be ideal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Djokovic and Medvedev end up battling it out in the final like they did in Paris recently, but this has been a long season and we see every year that upsets happen. With that in mind, I’m going to chance it that Andrey Rublev has a decent run here. The concern is that his form coming in hasn’t been great but he was flying when heading to the o2 last year and never came out of the group. The positive for Rublev is that we don’t know the status of Stefanos Tsitsipas but whatever it is it would be a surprise if he is 100%. Even if he is Rublev can still beat him. The other positive is despite his excellent second half of the season, I’m not completely convinced Casper Ruud belongs in this company. Rublev holds a 4-0 lead over the Norwegian too so if he can dispose of Tsitsipas in the first game and maintain that dominance over Ruud, the Russian will be through to a semi-final where he won’t be anything like the 5/1 we would be on him at regardless of who he plays. At 16/1 I’ll chance the lesser of the two Russians here.
Doubles Betting
Given that the 2020 winners aren’t in the field this week, you could make a case for the French pair of Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert being the defending champions this week because they won the tournament in 2019 and didn’t make it through to attempt to keep the title 12 months ago. They are here this year though and sit as number three seeds despite playing the fewest amount of events of the eight qualified teams.
The big reason for that is they won on home soil at the French Open and then made the final of the Paris Masters last week. They also won at Queens so they have two prestigious titles on their CV this season. You have to admire the top two seeds with Mate Pavic and Nikola Mektic winning eight titles plus the Olympics and making another three finals, while Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury made two Grand Slam finals, but while they are respected they might want quicker conditions. There isn’t really anything below them in the seedings I like, maybe with the exception of Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos, but while they are respected I think the French pair are the ones to beat this week.
Tips
Back A.Rublev to win Nitto ATP World Tour Finals (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 17.00 with Boylesports (1/3 1-2)
Back him here:
Back N.Mahut & P-H.Herbert to win Nitto ATP World Tour Finals Doubles for a 2/10 stake at 6.50 with Coral
Back them here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2021
