The second round of the Western & Southern Open at the ATP Cincinnati tournament continues in Ohio on Thursday as we move towards the halfway point of the latest Masters 1000 event on the calendar.
We expected this to be a week of shocks heading into the tournament given the amount of top level tennis that has been played recently and we haven’t been disappointed so far. That will have the big names on show on their toes on Thursday.
Center Court
We are back to just the two matches from the ATP draw on the main court on Thursday but unlike earlier in the week it is the men who open up the show as the former Olympic champion Alexander Zverev starts out on his quest for the Cincinnati title when he goes up against the man he beat for the gold medal in Tokyo in Karen Khachanov. We have to wait until the night session opener for the other men’s match to come along and when it does the French Open and Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz opens up his Cincinnati campaign when he takes on the popular Gael Monfils in a match which might not last long but will be entertaining while it does.
Grandstand
That means that we have three matches over on the Grandstand on Thursday with the two day contests coming in the second and third games on the court. The first of those sees Andrey Rublev looking to back up his run to the final in Montreal last week when he takes on Zhizhen Zhang before the home star Ben Shelton looks to make it into the last 16 of a home event when he faces Tomas Martin Etcheverry. The last men’s match closes out the night session on Wednesday and could be a potential cracker as Casper Ruud takes on Felix Auger-Aliassime.
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Outside Courts
The remainder of the men’s matches on Thursday come on the outside courts where those who have the relevant streams will be able to watch the likes of Hubert Hurkacz and Grigor Dimitrov opening up their Cincinnati campaigns while the British number one Jack Draper faces Stefanos Tsitsipas in the big match on Court 3. Over on Court 4 Holger Rune will be the star of the show but Brandon Nakashima and Pablo Carreno Busta had good wins in the first round and shouldn’t necessarily be written off in their matches.
Betting
After three days of profit in this tournament there isn’t much that I like the look of over the course of Thursday so I’m not going to push things too much but there is a bet that I do like and that comes in the form of the home player Brandon Nakashima who I think is a fair price at 5/6 to see off the French player Arthur Fils. I’m not convinced Fils is as solid on a hard court as I would like him to be. He is only 9:6 on the surface this year and just seems much better on clay to me.
Nakashima isn’t like that. Being American he is much more suited to this surface and in the last couple of weeks he is putting a good body of work together. He beat Denis Shapovalov and Tommy Paul in Montreal and already this week he has taken care of Taylor Fritz so that is some good opposition he has beaten. I would have him a little shorter than the 5/6 you can get on him so I think the America equates to a solid play to keep our good week going.
Tips
Back B.Nakashima to beat A.Fils for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Boylesports
Back him here:
