The first official day of action at the Paris 2024 Olympics takes place on Saturday and it is a day where the tennis tournament gets up and running across the many courts at Roland Garros as the first round of the singles and doubles competitions get started.
There is no saving the doubles for later in the week like in a Grand Slam so we get to see the likes of Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev, Iga Swiatek and Danielle Collins on show as well as Rafael Nadal who will be on the doubles court.
Men’s Singles
It is a good looking day of action in the men’s singles on Saturday with the top two seeds in the draw on show when Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz both begin their quest for the Olympic gold medal. Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul are some of the other players on show while there is British interest in the form of Jack Draper and Dan Evans who will both be in action on the opening day.
Two bets catch my eye on the opening day of the event with the first of those coming in the form of Nuno Borges to beat Mariano Navone. Navone enjoyed a good time of things earlier in the year but his recent form has fallen off a cliff and I think he is susceptible to the Portuguese number one who comes in here having won the title in Bastad and should be full of confidence are a result of that. Navone has lost six of his last seven and eight of his last 10 matches and so I’ve got to be on Borges at even money here.
The other bet that I like is for Tomas Machac to beat Zhizhen Zhang. Machac has had a good clay court campaign which included beating Novak Djokovic to make the final in Geneva before he went down to Casper Ruud in the final. Zhang had a good run in Rome and he is perfectly competent on the dirt but his consistency levels are below that of Machac and he has a lot more bad days than good ones. The Czech won their only previous meeting and I think he has the power game to burst through here.
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Women’s Singles
It is a good looking day of tennis in the women’s singles on Saturday as well where the overwhelming favourite for the gold medal, Iga Swiatek, gets here campaign underway on a day where we will also see the likes of Danielle Collins, Emma Navarro, Jasmine Paolini, Qinwen Zheng and Jelena Ostapenko all taking to the various courts at Roland Garros while the night session match is a women’s game too as Naomi Osaka takes on Angelique Kerber.
I’ll go with one bet in the women’s draw on Saturday as well with Katie Boulter looking like a vulnerable favourite on a surface which isn’t her best and doesn’t really allow her power game to come to the fore. That isn’t the case for Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova who won a Challenger title on clay here in Paris a couple of months ago and who came into this tournament off the back of a decent run in Budapest recently. Schmiedlova looks much more natural on clay of these two and while the hot conditions could allow Boulter’s heavy hitting to carry more weight, this is a surface you have to be comfortable on so I’ll take the Slovakian here.
Doubles
This is one of those tournaments where it can pay to get the doubles onside with much different teams to the ones we see for much of the year in a lot of cases pairing up because they have to be the same nationality in the Olympics. That brings singles players into the event a lot more and you get some mismatches and some weird odds as a result of that but while there will be plenty of attention on the doubles on Saturday with the marquee pairing of Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal beginning their campaign for the gold medal but a quick look down the schedule doesn’t throw anything up immediately so I’ll keep my powder dry in the doubles on Saturday.
Tips
Back N.Borges to beat M.Navone for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Betway
Back T.Machac to beat Z.Zhang for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
Back A-K.Schmiedlova to beat K.Boulter for a 3/10 stake at 2.05 with Unibet
