Madrid Open Men's Day Six Tips

Madrid Open Men's Day Six Tips: Big change in previous pricing between Tsitsipas and Rublev

There's quarter-final action in prospect today at the Madrid Masters, and after yesterday's schedule was dominated by pre-match favourites, Dan Weston looks to see if that will continue...

Nadal scrapes through to set up Alcaraz meeting

Yesterday we discussed the likely dominance of market favourites, and that was indeed the case from a results perspective, at least. It does, however, only tell half the story with Rafa Nadal in real trouble in particular. The King of Clay looked like he would get a routine win when a set and break up over David Goffin, but the Belgian fought back to force a decider and spurned four match points in the final set tiebreak, which Nadal eventually won 11-9.

A match lasting in excess of three hours never tends to do players many favours, so it will be fascinating to see how Nadal can back this up when he faces countryman Carlos Alcaraz. These doubts are evidence in the market pricing for today - despite Nadal starting the event as favourite, it's actually Alcaraz who is a slight favourite for this match at 1.95.

Big drift on Nadal from previous meeting

Nadal narrowly defeated Alcaraz in a three-setter in March on slow hard court at Indian Wells, priced at around the 1.70 mark, which is probably not far off the line for this match anticipated prior to the event.

Numbers-wise, Nadal has the edge on 12-month clay numbers, although that perhaps doesn't fully take into account Alcaraz's improvement this year. I'm not hugely comfortable with this view, but if I had to give a view on value for this match, I'd lean towards Nadal given the price movement from their last meeting, and we do have to remember that he's only lost once all season.

Djokovic solid favourite over Hurkacz

Prior to this on the schedule, though, is Novak Djokovic versus Hubert Hurkacz at 1300 UK time, with the top seed a heavy favourite at 1.32. This looks about right to me, with Djokovic not quite dominating this year so far but having a marked edge over Hurkacz when looking at clay data. However, the Pole has taken a set from Djokovic in their last two meetings, on indoor hard and grass, and has the potential to be competitive here - particularly given the understandable drop-off in Djokovic's level this season.

Zverev with edge over Auger-Aliassime

Moving on to the latter matches today, Alexander Zverev takes a 4-1 main tour head-to-head lead into his clash with Felix Auger-Aliassime, and the 1.53 market line about the German doesn't look miles out of line.

I'd have probably had Zverev slightly shorter-priced, but not unduly so, and 12 month clay data suggests he has a decent edge both on service and return points won percentages.

Rublev looking undervalued for Tsitsipas clash

This isn't the case for Stefanos Tsitsipas for his match with Andrey Rublev. The serve-oriented Tsitsipas has an edge on serve, unsurprisingly, but Rublev has won more return points on clay over the last year.

However, there's been a big difference in break point conversion, so I think Tsitsipas is a little overvalued given that over performance on break point conversion tends to be very unsustainable in the medium-long term.

The duo have met plenty of times during their rise up the rankings, and Rublev has won two of their last three, although Tsitsipas did win on clay last time they met on the surface. Interestingly, though, all three of those more recent meetings had the duo priced at around even money apiece, so Tsitsipas at 1.44 does look short-priced today.