French Open Men's Day Three Tips: Lajovic too short for Mager clash

 French Open Men's Day Three Tips: Lajovic too short for Mager clash

There are 20 men's singles matches at the French Open today and our tennis columnist, Dan Weston, has gone through the schedule to pick his best Roland Garros bets

Ramos with easy victory over Mannarino

We picked up an excellent winner on day two with Albert Ramos easily covering the game handicap in his straight sets win over Adrian Mannarino, although we were frustrated with one of our outright quarter winners, Filip Krajinovic, being ousted at the hands of Nikola Milojevic. There were also surprise losses for Gael Monfils and in particular, Daniil Medvedev, although I noted in yesterday's preview that he has much to prove in slow conditions. Marton Fucsovics got past the Russian in four sets.

Moving on to today's matches, we see round one conclude with Tuesday's schedule, before the bottom half of the draw play their round two matches on Wednesday, and there are still a number of big names looking to make round two via winning today. These include world number one Novak Djokovic, who is priced by the market as a virtual bye to get past the talented young Swedish player, Mikael Ymer, while Stefanos Tsitsipas will be looking to progress against Jaume Munar, who should be pretty competent opposition in these slow conditions.

There's some tricky spots on day three from a value perspective too. The South African, Lloyd Harris, initially looked a little value at 1.97 for his match against Alexei Popyrin, but he's another who retired last time out - last week in the Forli Challenger semi-finals against Lorenzo Musetti.

Lajovic too short for Mager clash

After the tour resumed, Dusan Lajovic was priced very defensively by the markets after struggling in some exhibition events prior to that, and the Serb struggled initially, losing in the opening round in his first three events. However, he's picked up since then with notable wins over Milos Raonic in Rome, and Karen Khachanov in Hamburg, but I'm extremely surprised to see him at 1.15 for his match against Gianluca Mager.

The Italian, Mager, has struggled against fairly tough opposition in the events he's played in post-lockdown, being underdog in all three defeats, but was priced at around the 3.00 mark against Grigor Dimitrov several weeks ago in Rome. Is Lajovic expected to be that much better than Dimitrov on clay? I just don't see it.

Let's not forget, Mager reached the final in ATP Rio de Janeiro towards the end of February on clay, with wins over Dominic Thiem and Casper Ruud en route to that, and only narrowly lost to Cristian Garin in that final, 7-6 7-5. In the run-up to the match, we should be able to get around 1.95 on Mager +7.5 games, in line with general market pricing, and that looks a decent enough spot to me.

Interesting to assess Mayot's level against Davidovich Fokina

I am also interested to see how Harold Mayot performs for his match against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina - two players which readers are likely to see a lot more of in the coming years.

The French wild card, Mayot, won the Australian Open junior tournament in January, and is starting to pick up some solid results in Challengers, making round two in Aix en Provence several weeks ago and the quarter-finals in Pau in February, beating Robin Haase and only just losing to Jiri Vesely. He's also had competitive matches against Gilles Simon on Indoor Hard, and against Pablo Cuevas, on clay, either just before or after lockdown.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Mayot kept this pretty competitive, despite Davidovich Fokina trading at 1.14 currently, and it will be interesting to see where his game is at against another young player with very high potential.