ATP Western & Southern Open Day Five Tips: Raonic a value favourite over Krajinovic

 ATP Western & Southern Open Day Five Tips: Raonic a value favourite over Krajinovic

We have quarter-final action from the Western & Southern Open on Wednesday evening and returning to preview the matches is our tennis columnist, Dan Weston...

Tiebreaks get us a winner on day four

John Isner and Stefanos Tsitsipas combined to give us a second consecutive winner in New York with the duo combining to play two tiebreaks, with our position of over 12.5 games in the first set got over the line with just one break point chance throughout the entire set.

In one of the other matches last night, Milos Raonic ended Andy Murray's tournament with a dominant 6-2 6-2 victory, winning 59% of points in the match and today, the Canadian takes on Filip Krajinovic in the night quarter-final this evening.

Raonic a value favourite over Krajinovic

Krajinovic has impressed here, with back-to-back 6-2 6-1 victories over Dominic Thiem and Marton Fucsovics, but so has Raonic, who is also yet to drop a set against Murray, his British compatriot Dan Evans and also Sam Querrey. In addition, Raonic's serve has also yet to be broken in this tournament, so he's evidently serving well with both Murray and Evans probably leaning towards a return-orientated dynamic as opposition.

On medium-term data, Raonic should be shorter than he is here. The current market line is 1.63, but my model has him as a stronger favourite, pricing him at 1.42. My suspicion is that the market has over-reacted a little to Krajinovic's wins this week, so therefore Raonic as a favourite is today's recommendation.

Bautista-Agut with much to prove against top opposition

Men's singles matches get started at 1800 UK time today, and starting the action is Daniil Medvedev against Roberto Bautista-Agut. The Russian is a 1.48 favourite to get the win here, and I make this a little big, but not hugely so. Medvedev's hard court record in the last year is extremely strong - he's running at around 108% combined service/return points won - and in addition, Bautista-Agut's career record as an underdog against top 10 opposition isn't good at all, perhaps indicating that he struggles to find an extra gear against the best players on tour.

In other matches, Novak Djokovic looks accurately priced at 1.21 to get the better of Jan-Lennard Struff, who has battled through two three-setters as an underdog in the last two rounds. In total, Struff has recorded three underdog wins here in this tournament but I think the world number one is likely to be a step too far for the German. I'd be surprised if Djokovic didn't get through to a potential semi-final with Medvedev tomorrow.

Big-serving expected in Opelka/Tsitsipas clash

Moving on, the biggest-serving match-up looks to be between Reilly Opelka and Stefanos Tsitsipas, although my model doesn't have the likelihood of no breaks in set one quite as high as Tsitsipas' meeting with John Isner yesterday - a drop from around 56% to 46%. Again, I think Tsitsipas is a little over-rated here at 1.46 and it will be interesting to see the performance levels of the improving Opelka against him - I wouldn't be surprised at all if Opelka pushed Tsitsipas strongly in this encounter.