French Open Men's Day Seven Tips

French Open Men's Day Seven Tips: Medvedev to continue clay progress

Third round action at the French Open continues on Saturday, with eight further third round matches on the schedule. Dan Weston is back to preview the day ahead...

Heavy favourites yesterday - straight-set wins

Straight-set wins were the order of the day for the heavy favourites yesterday, with Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal, Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz all progressing via a 3-0 scoreline, while we picked up a winner as Filip Krajinović covered the game handicap without too much difficulty against Felix Auger-Aliassime.

Theoretical mismatches - Tsitsipas could struggle to cover

Moving on to today, there's the usual array of strong pre-match favourites again today, as is usually the case at this stage of Slams where there are still plenty of theoretical mismatches on the card. All of Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jannik Sinner and Marin Cilic are priced around 1.20 or below for their matches, while Holger Rune isn't far off that against Hugo Gaston.

It's interesting to see Tsitsipas priced up at 1.06 for his match against Mikael Ymer, who picked up an underdog winner for us on Thursday against Dan Evans - Tsitsipas was priced around the 1.20 mark at the Australian Open in January against Ymer and won effectively 18-9 in games, but I'm not sure there's much difference in the gap between the duo's ability on hard court or clay courts.

Tsitsipas is the better server by a long way - there's no doubt about that - but his return game is not top level and in fact, Ymer has a slightly higher return points won percentage on clay in the last 12 months. 8.5 games is the handicap line, and I wouldn't be surprised if Ymer covers that against quite a serve-oriented opponent.

Market support - Hurkacz against Goffin

In the two matches where the market anticipates proceedings to be more evenly matched, Hubert Hurkacz has received early market support for his match against David Goffin and is now trading at 1.74 to beat the Belgian. I think the market support is quite justified - Hurkacz on clay simply is much more of a consistent server - and the current market lines look more appropriate.

Favourite value - Medvedev versus Kecmanovic

The other fascinating clash where there isn't a particularly strong market favourite features world number two Daniil Medvedev. Today, he faces the Serb, Miomir Kecmanovic, who is starting to become more consistent on the main tour after some inconsistency following excellent performances on the Challenger Tour several years ago.

I'm surprised the market isn't more confident on Medvedev here. Yes, he's had his woes on clay, and yes, Kecmanovic has improved, but 12 month clay data suggests Medvedev should be shorter-priced, and his numbers so far in this event have been very strong, winning 57% of points competed in, and 69% of games played.

My lean for today is towards Medvedev at 1.68 to continue his French Open run, and to set up a probable round four meeting with Marin Cilic on Monday.