The third day of action at Wimbledon sees the first round come to a conclusion and the second round beginning as the tournament begins to crack on at a pace. Rain frustrated some on Tuesday which is why the first round still needs completing and a dodgy forecast for the rest of the week is going to ensure there is plenty of catching up to do.
Tuesday Recap
A truncated day of action didn’t start how we would have liked from a betting point of view with both Feliciano Lopez and Roberta Vinci proving to be too strong for their opponents but we are nicely positioned in the Jiri Vesely match as he will lead 2-0 in sets when play resumes on Wednesday.
Bernard Tomic needs to win the final set of his marathon with Fernando Verdasco 6-3 or better for that handicap to be covered and if Monica Puig takes a set off Jo Konta then that over will land and we’ll be really up and running for the tournament from a betting point of view.
Away from the bets on Tuesday there were comfortable wins for Serena Williams, Andy Murray, Richard Gasquet, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Dominika Cibulkova among others. No seeds lost on Tuesday so both halves of the draw in play there continues to look quite strong going into the second round.
Centre Court
The action on Centre begins with a first round match in the ladies draw as Agnieszka Radwanska takes on Kateryna Kozlova before the two biggest names in the tennis world are in second round action when Novak Djokovic plays Adrian Mannarino and Roger Federer faces the British first round hero Marcus Willis on a day Willis will never forget.
Court 1
Jo Konta and Monica Puig conclude their first round match first up on Court 1 before two men’s matches take place when Grigor Dimitrov meets Gilles Simon and Andreas Seppi takes on Milos Raonic in matches which should be pretty good to watch.
Court 2
Fernando Verdasco and Bernard Tomic will play their first set to open up the action on Court 2 on Wednesday before Dan Evans plays Alexandr Dolgopolov in the second round. Simona Halep faces Francesco Schiavone in a tasty women’s match and then Garbine Muguruza is back on court when she faces Jana Cepelova of Slovakia.
Court 3
Florian Mayer and Dominic Thiem play to a finish to start things on Court 3 and then Belinda Bencic and Tsvetana Pironkova meet in a really good looking first round match. That is followed by a couple of second round matches including Marin Cilic vs Sergiy Stakhovsky and then Venus Williams against Maria Sakkari.
Best of the Rest
The outside courts are quite busy on Wednesday as the tournament looks to catch up after the rain on Tuesday. Among those in action away from the show courts are Heather Watson, Angelique Kerber and Kei Nishikori who are all on Court 12, Tomas Berdych, Sam Stosur, Sabine Lisicki, Petra Kvitova and David Goffin who all play on Court 18 and David Ferrer and Madison Keys out on Court 16.
Betting
With three bets left to be settled from Tuesday I’m not going too mad on Wednesday but there are three that grab my attention – two at very big looking prices and then one who I believe should be a good deal shorter than he is.
The man who I think should be much shorter than he is comes in the form of the Frenchman Gilles Simon. I’ve taken Simon during this grass court season but I think this tournament is slightly different in that he has more time to find a groove and he showed that in the previous round when he defeated Janko Tipsarevic in four sets.
Simon takes on Grigor Dimitrov who picked up a win in the first round but whose form is not good at the minute and if we want a direct form guide we have one with Tipsarevic dumping the Bulgarian out of Queens a couple of weeks ago. If that isn’t enough Simon leads Dimitrov 5-1 on their head to head including wins in both their matches on grass. I think he should be a lot shorter than he is and I’m happy to be on Simon there.
One at an even bigger price is Nicolas Almagro. Admittedly grass isn’t the Spaniard’s favourite surface but he’s a good enough player to see off Denis Istomin who has never had any consistency and who really should have been knocked out by Kevin Anderson having trailed 2-0 in sets in the first round.
Almagro also needed five sets to come past the Brazilian player Dutra Silva but he came into the tournament in better form. Istomin has only won four matches on the main tour all year and never two in the same tournament. Almagro’s form on grass might not be brilliant but he has made the third round here four times and he was a quarter finalist here in the Olympics. He has the tools to see off Istomin at a tasty price.
Going into the women’s draw and I think Sabine Lisicki is there for the taking. I like Lisicki and usually she raises her game at Wimbledon but now ranked 81 in the world she will need to raise her game to beat Sam Stosur.
Again grass isn’t Stosur’s best surface but she is playing pretty well at the minute as we saw in the French Open and it isn’t like Stosur has never played well on grass. Lisicki is very all or nothing at the minute and at 8/5 I think there’s value on the Australian to see if this is one of the German’s nothing games. Stosur leads Lisicki 5-2 in their head to head and 2-1 on grass so there’s enough reason to believe she can win this match.
Tips
Back N.Almagro to beat D.Istomin for a 3/10 stake at 3.13 with Betfair
Back him here:
Back G.Simon to beat G.Dimitrov for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with NetBet
Back him here:
Back S.Stosur to beat S.Lisicki for a 4/10 stake at 2.60 with Boylesports
Back her here:
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