The quarter finals begin at the ATP Miami Open on Wednesday when the matches in the bottom half of the draw are played out. That means come the end of the day we will know the identity of the first semi-final in the second Masters 1000 event of the season.
We have two men on show on Wednesday who would have been expected to be in the last eight, and indeed the last four, and two men who are more surprise packages but deserve their spot this late into the draw.
Tomas Machac vs Jannik Sinner
The opening quarter final of the tournament sees one of the unlikelier players to be in the last eight going up against a man who would have been fully expected to be at this stage of the event as Tomas Machac takes on Jannik Sinner.
Sinner is now one of the best players in the world and having won the Australian Open there is a sense that he’ll go from strength to strength in the game now. He has largely been on easy street in this tournament although he did have to come from a set down to Tallon Griekspoor a couple of rounds ago. Machac has battled very hard to make it to this stage and he fully deserved to be in this quarter final. He opened his section of the draw up when he cruised past Andrey Rublev earlier in the competition and then outlasted Andy Murray before a welcome much easier time of it against Matteo Arnaldi in the previous round. This is a level or two up on what Machac has faced so far but the fact that this is their first meeting might allow Machac to be competitive but this one is all about Sinner, as the odds would suggest. There isn’t anything that jumps out here.
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Nicolas Jarry vs Daniil Medvedev
The second quarter final comes along in the night session when Daniil Medvedev continues the defence of his Miami Open title when he goes up against the Chilean number one Nicolas Jarry for a spot in the semi-final.
Medvedev couldn’t be described as flawless in the defence of his title so far but he has made it through his three matches without dropping a set and you can’t really ask for much more than that. What has been noticeable has been how well the Russian has finished his matches so if Jarry is going to get into Medvedev he probably needs to do it early. The good thing for the man from Chile is he has the first delivery to keep himself honest in this contest. These two have only met once in the past and that was in Barcelona in 2019 so we can’t really read too much into what was a straight sets win for Medvedev. There isn’t a huge amount that interests me here but Jarry has gone to a tiebreak in the opening set of all three matches this week while the last two Medvedev matches have seen him win the opening set 7-5 or 7-6 before pulling away. I’m not interested in 7-5 scores but if you take the over 12.5 games in the first set you can get 3/1 on what would be the set going to a tiebreak. Given how the matches these two have played in this week have had extended opening sets that feels like a big price to me.
Tips
Back N.Jarry vs D.Medvedev – Over 12.5 games in the first set for a 2/10 stake at 4.00 with Bet365
