AN excellent start for Mark Stinchcombe (@markstinchcombe) on Monday with two winners out of three. Now for Day 2 tips…
Elias Ymer v Ivo Karlovic | Tuesday 11:30 | BBCi
36 year-old big-serving Ivo Karlovic has been serving at an incredibly high level this year, even by his standards. He's won 84% of his 1st serve points – more than any other player on tour.
He also sits 6th for points won his 2nd serve. In addition, he's saved the most breakpoints, 80 out of 99 – 81%. With his serve working so well, he arguably only needs to take a single point on an opponents serve in a tie-break to win a set.
Indeed he's played nine tie-breaks in just six grass court matches this year, with five of them going to a breaker in the opening set, the other being a 7-5 win against Tomas Berdych.
Elias Ymer has only played four grass matches in his career (all this year) but has already played four tie-breaks. In fact he took sets off big serving Nick Kyrgios 7-5 and 7-6 earlier in the year.
All in all I fancy a tight 1st set probably leading to a tie-break. You can get 13/10 on a 1st set breaker but for a little bit of insurance we can get 7-5 included either way as well at 19/20 by backing Over 10.5 total 1st set games. FYI, Karlovic's tie-break record this year stands at 11-18 and Ymer's 1-3 (8-5 including qualifiers) and challengers).
Misaki Doi v Elina Svitolina | Tuesday 11:30 | BBCi
Elina Svitolina has lost seven of her nine career grass court matches and has never been past the 1st round here. Misaki Doi has won three of her four matches on grass this year and is clearly a better surface for her, registering a 58% win rate in-comparison to her 54% across all surfaces.
These two have met once before, last year here in the 1st round in which Doi comfortably won 6-4 6-1. She was 2/1 that day, I think the 28/17 still represents value on the Japanese.
Feliciano Lopez v Steve Darcis | Tuesday 15:00 | BBCi
World number 16 Feliciano Lopez has had a horrible year which just seems to be getting worse and worse. He's a negative 16-19 but has lost 11 of his last 17 matches, including three of his five on grass with two being as 1/3 and 2/5 favourite.
6/1 Steve Darcis might ring a bell for a few of you. He's the man that famously beat Rafael Nadal two years ago in straight sets here. Indeed he's also beaten former Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych in straight sets on the grass in the Olympics so he's clearly got the game to trouble. He's only played one grass court match this year, losing a narrow final set breaker to Brydan Klein at Queen's.
These two have met on grass before in the 2nd round of Queen's with Lopez coming through 7-5 in the decider. Back Darcis to make life difficult again for the Spaniard.
Best Bets
Elias Ymer v Ivo Karlovic – Over 10.5 Set 1 Total Games (19/20 Bwin)
Misaki Doi v Elina Svitolina – Misaki Doi to win (28/17 888 Sport)
Feliciano Lopez v Steve Darcis – Steve Darcis to win a set (Evens William Hill)
Andy Murray 3/1 To Beat Kukushkin 3-0 (Ladbrokes)
Andy Murray starts his campaign against 5000/1 Mikhail Kukushkin.
He's 1/7 to win in straight sets but you can get him at 3/1 if you join Ladbrokes before the start of this match.
