The opening day of the ATP Miami Open takes place at the Hard Rock Stadium and surrounding areas on Wednesday when the first round of the tournament gets underway with players looking to set up a date with a seed later in the week.
We have to wait until Friday for the bigger names in the sport to come to the party but there are still enough players who have fallen down the rankings who are good enough to keep us entertained on Wednesday.
Stadium Court
We have three men’s matches on the Stadium Court on Wednesday although we do need to wait for a tasty looking women’s match to conclude first. When the men come onto the scene we begin with Tomas Machac going up against the home wildcard Darwin Blanch before arguably the tie of the first round, at least in magnitude of names, concludes the day session. That sees Andy Murray going up against the injury prone Matteo Berrettini for a shot at Tomas Martin Etcheverry in the second round. The women begin the night session but when they are done the action closes out with the home player Alex Michelsen meeting the qualifier Lukas Klein.
Grandstand
That means that just the two matches will take place on the Grandstand court from the ATP event with the men actually opening and closing the show in that part of the grounds. Denis Shapovalov is the eye catching name starting the action. The Canadian is in on a protected ranking and could really do with defeating Luciano Darderi when they go head to head. We have to wait right until the end of the evening for the other ATP match on this court as Marcos Giron looks to use home advantage in his favour when he goes up against Dominik Koepfer.
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Butch Buchholz
Two more matches from the men’s draw come along on the Butch Buchholz court, which is always a popular place for fans to watch their tennis. We have to wait for three women’s matches to be played out before the men join the fray so it will be near the start of the night session when the wildcard Martin Damm meets Zhizhen Zhang. When they have completed their match the schedule concludes with Arthur Fils going up against the Italian player Matteo Arnaldi for a spot in the second round.
Best of the Rest
There is plenty of action on the outside courts from the ATP draw on Wednesday with Jack Draper one of the more appealing players on show. He will be out on Court 1 where Max Purcell and Marton Fucsovics will also do battle. Miomir Kecmanovic is another player who takes to that particular court while elsewhere, Botic van de Zanschulp, Yoshihito Nishioka, Nuno Borges and Luca van Assche will all look to set up clashes with seeds later in the week.
Betting
I’ll edge my way into the tournament this week but I’m a little surprised that Matteo Arnaldi is solid odds against to see of an Arthur Fils, whose talent is there for all to see but the consistency isn’t quite there at the minute. To be fair to Fils, his Indian Wells form hasn’t worked out too bad. His win over Nuno Borges looks good after he won the Phoenix Challenger event at the weekend and a win over Alejando Davidovich Fokina has to be earned too so now it will be interesting to see if he can kick on and show he can put back to back weeks together.
Arnaldi arrives in Miami in decent touch. A couple of weeks ago in Acapulco he put paid to Taylor Fritz, which was a real eye catching result, before he went down to the big serving Ben Shelton in three sets. Last week he took care of Luca van Assche without too much fuss and led the eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz by a set in the second round before the Spaniard went into overdrive. I like the Arnaldi game and if Fils allows him to hang around he might just get caught out. I’ll side with the Italian, who has won both of their previous meetings, in this battle.
Tips
Back M.Arnaldi to beat A.Fils for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with William Hill
Back him here:
