The third round of the ATP Miami Open begins around the grounds at the Hard Rock Stadium in Florida on Sunday as the second leg of the Sunshine double continues with a week to go before the champion is crowned.
This is the first round in the tournament where the seeded players can face each other so we get some improved matches which should see what has already been a pretty decent standard get elevated even further now. All the games are on the main three courts too which helps.
Stadium Court
This is the half of the draw where three of the ATP matches are on the main stadium court but it is the women who get the action underway before the day session is concluded with two men’s games. The first of them sees two exciting players going at it when Taylor Fritz takes on Denis Shapovalov and then when they are done Carlos Alcaraz continues his defence of the title. He was goes up against a Dusan Lajovic who has had a couple of good wins so far this week. The final men’s match on the main court comes in the night session and is the second part of it as Casper Ruud goes up against Botic van de Zandschulp.
Grandstand
With three matches on the main court it means there are only two in the men’s draw over on the Grandstand one and the first of them comes right from the start of the schedule when the home player Tommy Paul is on show. He takes on Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in a match which could take a while to settle. We have to wait right until the end of the order of play for the other men’s match but it should be worth waiting for when Jannik Sinner meets Grigor Dimitrov in what should be a cracker of a contest.
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Butch Buchholz
The other three matches all come on the Butch Buchholz court as far as the men are concerned on Sunday. It is a women’s match which begins the schedule but then the three men’s match all follow each other after that. The first of them sees the impressive young star Holger Rune going up against Diego Schwartzman before Andrey Rublev will look to make progress under the radar. He will face Miomir Kecmanovic and then the last men’s match sees two unseeded players going at it as Emil Ruusuvuori takes on the wildcard Taro Daniel who emphatically put Alexander Zverev out in the previous round.
Betting
Given the way he took care of Alexander Zverev on Friday night, I’m very surprised that Taro Daniel is as big as 6/4 to beat an Emil Ruusuvuori who has done well to come through two matches but Nuno Borges looked out on his feet in the first one and Roberto Bautista Agut looked in no form at all the second one. Even with those wins, Ruusuvuori is only 10-9 for the season and I fancy he is going to need to find plenty more than what he has had to come through here.
I don’t just say that because of the emphatic way that Daniel came past Zverev in the previous round. Admittedly Zverev assisted that with a number of unforced errors but Daniel had 17 winners to the two unforced errors in that match which is an insane differential. He now has more than double the wins to losses this season and among those wins in recent weeks he has seen off Casper Ruud and Matteo Berrettini as well as Zverev here. He only went down in three sets in a match in which it needed Cameron Norrie to bring out his absolute best in Indian Wells a couple of weeks ago but the Japanese wildcard has shown no signs of slowing down and he feels a massive price here.
Tips
Back T.Daniel to beat E.Ruusuvuori for a 3/10 stake at 2.50 with Boylesports
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