ATP Wimbledon Day Two Tips

ATP Wimbledon Day Two Tips: Tseng to keep Gray waiting for main tour win

Men's singles action on Tuesday at Wimbledon will focus on the bottom half of the draw, and returning to give his thoughts on day two is Dan Weston...

Plenty of heavy favourites ahead of day two

Rain has affected the day one proceedings so far at SW19, with matches still going on this evening, and a few being rescheduled for tomorrow, where we should get less in the way of rain delays.

Having previewed day one from the top half of the draw already though, I'll discuss the bottom half of the draw here assuming that the weather is good enough to get it all played tomorrow - if it is delayed, then this preview will obviously still be valid for Wednesday's action.

Matteo Berrettini, Nick Kyrgios, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Rafa Nadal headline the action from the bottom half of the draw, and in all honesty, it would be a huge shock if any of this quartet were defeated in their openers. Likewise, players like Roberto Bautista-Agut and Alex De Minaur should progress with minimal fuss. All are heavy favourites to do so.

With the big names being very heavy favourites to make round two, and justifiably so, it's logical to look at some of the lower-profile clashes in the hunt for pre-match value.

Draper a vulnerable favourite against Ilkley winner Bergs

One vulnerable favourite, in my view, is Jack Draper who is 1.39 to start his Wimbledon campaign with a win against the wild card, Zizou Bergs. The Brit has done very well indoors this year at Challenger level, winning four titles, including a three-set win over Bergs in the final in St Brieuc several months ago.

Draper has taken these wins into grass, reaching the semi-final of Eastbourne last week and winning four main tour matches on the surface in the warm-up events for Wimbledon - although his losses weren't against particularly good players on grass this year - several defeats have come as a pre-match favourite.

However, Bergs has shown he's no mug on grass either, picking up his wild card via winning the Ilkley Challenger as a qualifier where he had good wins over the likes of Jack Sock, Alexei Popyrin and Andreas Seppi, so shouldn't be underestimated here. I think that's exactly what the market is doing.

Tseng should have too much for Gray

Another Brit who looks very over-rated is Alastair Gray. The wild card faces Chun Hsin Tseng, with neither having won a main tour match in their career, but Tseng does have better data from those losing matches - Gray's career matches on the main tour have been on grass, and have yielded poor numbers, particularly on serve.

Being realistic, Gray, who has just broken into the top 300 for the first time, is quite far short of main tour level, and there's a fair argument to suggest that he's not even really of Challenger standard in general either.

While Gray might be a little more accustomed to grass, Tseng looks a much more accomplished player in general, on the verge of the top 100 and having won two Challenger titles already this season. With this in mind, Tseng at 1.70 looks some decent value to me.

Sonego favourite to revenge Queens loss to Kudla

In other matches, Marcos Giron has more grass experience than Holger Rune, which makes him more likely to get past the young Dane, in my view, and the market agrees - he's 1.80 to get the win.

Finally, a high-quality, competitive encounter could be Lorenzo Sonego versus Denis Kudla, with Sonego a very marginal 1.96 favourite. Both players have positive records on grass in recent years, with Kudla in particular having shown the ability to raise his level on the surface, but I agree with the market making Sonego favourite here to get revenge for his three-set loss to Kudla at Queens several weeks ago.