Given that the Canadian Open still hasn’t finished, the opening day of the Western & Southern Open event is a quiet one as the ATP Cincinnati Masters 1000 tournament begins with just the two matches in Ohio on Monday.
We have a couple of first round matches to enjoy mixed in with all the women’s matches at this event with one of the seeds looking to make it through and a competitive looking game also on show as well.
Flavio Cobolli vs Tommy Paul
The one match in the day session out in Cincinnati comes after a couple of women’s matches and is expected onto court around 8pm UK time and sees the Italian player Flavio Cobolli taking on the tenth seed Tommy Paul.
Paul is having an excellent season, one which could have been even better if he didn’t keep running into Carlos Alcaraz in the bigger events but back on a quick American hard court you would think he’ll be nicely suited to the conditions and he’ll fancy his chances of overcoming the Italian who began the year outside the top 100 in the world but now could be seeded for the US Open in a couple of weeks if he can have a solid outing here in Cincinnati. Cobolli is actually 21-10 on a hard court this year which includes a run to the final in Washington while the Olympics was taking place. Paul is just outside the top eight in the ATP singles race this season so a big month on the US hard courts could easily see him lining up at the World Tour Finals at the end of the campaign and I don’t think it is a bad thing that he went out of the Canadian Open early last week. He is 83:39 on a hard court since the beginning of 2022 and looks a worthy favourite here. The problem with betting on this one is it is hard to tell if Cobolli is as good as his numbers make out on a hard court or whether he just took advantage of the big guns being in Paris when he made the Washington final. I’ll sit this one out and take a watching brief on it.
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Karen Khachanov vs Francisco Cerundolo
The night session match on the opening day of the competition comes along after a doubles match so should be on court around 12.30am UK time and it sees the former Olympic silver medallist Karen Khachanov going up against the recent winner in Croatia in Francisco Cerundolo.
Cerundolo had an excellent spell on the clay with 20 of his 24 wins this season coming on the surface but this is anything but clay and that is one problem that the Argentine has here. The other is that he has a 5-0 losing record against Khachanov, three of which were this year and two of those three were on the clay which Cerundolo loves playing on. That tells us there is a technical issue when these two come together and I suspect the power game that the Russian brings is just too much for Cerundolo to handle. It probably isn’t a bad thing for the 25-year-old that after winning in Croatia and having a solid Olympics that he went nowhere near Montreal last week but Cerundolo is just 3:5 on hard courts this year and 26:30 since the beginning of 2022. He must be vulnerable here. Khachanov arrives here in ordinary form in recent times with just two wins in seven since the French Open but he is a different animal on a hard court where he is 13:8 for the year having won in Doha but is also 67:43 for the three years prior to that, which includes runs to the semi-final of the US Open and Australian Open as well as a spin to the final of the Olympics in Tokyo. I don’t know if Khachanov will get this done in straight sets but with a 5-0 record and on a surface he is comfortable on and Cerundolo isn’t, by the time this is done I think the Russian will have three games in hand at least.
Tips
Back K.Khachanov (-2.5 games) to beat F.Cerundolo for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Coral
