French Open Men's Day Six Tips: Sonego a false underdog for Fritz clash

The French Open moves into round three today and our tennis columnist, Dan Weston, has found another value wager from the Roland Garros schedule...

Ramos unfortunate in straight-set defeat

Our heavy underdog pick on day five, Albert Ramos, was beaten in straight sets by Marton Fucsovics, but this doesn't begin to tell the story of the match. Both players had 11 break points, and Fucsovics only won the points count 52% to 48% - if you had to hunt for another straight-set three-set loss where the losing player won 48% of points in the match, you might be looking for a while.

Big names made it through relatively unscathed in Thursday's second round action, with the exception of Denis Shapovalov, who was ousted at the hands of Roberto Carballes Baena. There were wins for Novak Djokovic, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Andrey Rublev, among others - I thought Tsitsipas would be tested more by Pablo Cuevas, but he will be glad of a straight-set victory to ease accumulated fatigue concerns after an opening round five-setter.

Ruud capable of shocking Thiem

As the tournament moves into round three, there are eight third-round matches on the schedule, with action continuing to get underway at 10:00 UK time. My match of the day, Casper Ruud versus Dominic Thiem, gets the schedule underway, and despite his illustrious clay record and winning the US Open recently, I can't help feeling Thiem is a little short at 1.16 for his match against one of the most promising young players on the tour on this surface.

I'd be even more confident if Ruud wasn't pushed to five sets in round two by Tommy Paul, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Norwegian talent pushed Thiem - or even caused a real shock here.



Schwartzman an overwhelming clash for Gombos meeting

Priced even shorter than Thiem is Diego Schwartzman at 1.07 for his match against Norbert Gombos. The Argentine, Schwartzman, has performed well on his preferred clay so far this season, reaching the final in the Rome Masters - we can forgive him a loss at altitude in Kitzbuhel, which probably weren't the most favourable conditions for his rather return-orientated style.

I fully expect Schwartzman to get the win here but think the price is short, and it will be interesting to see how Gombos competes today.

Sonego with the data edge over Fritz

For today's pick, I like Lorenzo Sonego as a very marginal underdog at 2.06 for his match with Taylor Fritz. Both players laboured to five-set wins over current Challenger Tour players in round one as strong favourites (although in Fritz's case I want to point out that qualifier Tomas Machac has pretty high future upside).

Moving on from that, both players again had similar round two wins, in straight sets, with Sonego's against Alexander Bublik as a pre-match underdog particularly impressive.

I actually make Sonego the better clay-courter on 18-month clay data, and my model made him a slight favourite to progress to Sunday's fourth round.

Five-setter could affect Zverev

In other matches, the market is factoring Alexander Zverev's five-setter against Pierre-Hugues Herbert into his 1.45 price against Marco Cecchinato to some extent - probably fair enough - while Rafa Nadal joins those other heavy favourites with what the market considers to be another virtual bye as he faces Stefano Travaglia. We will probably have to wait for a seeded quarter-final against Alexander Zverev before Nadal's match prices rise from around the 1.01 to 1.02 level.

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