After Federer reclaimed the number one title in Rotterdam last week, this week is a little mixed on the ATP World Tour with the Rio, Marseille and Delray Beach hosting ATP tournaments.
In Rio (ATP 500) we have a pretty solid field with the number one seed being Australian Open finalist Marin Cilic (find out what racquet he uses here) and the second seed being Dominic Thiem (find out what racquet he uses here). Thiem is coming from a win in the Argentina Open last week and is playing on his favourite surface (clay) so he’s my pick to win. His strongest competitors being Pablo Carreno Busta and Fabio Fognini in my opinion (Cilic is not great on clay).
In Marseille (ATP 250) top seed David Goffin had to pull out due to a massively unlucky eye-injury he suffered in the match against Grigor Dimitrov in the semi-final in Rotterdam. This leaves Stan Wawrinka (originally number 2 seed), Tomas Berdych and Lucas Pouille as the favourites on paper. However, Wawrinka has not been playing even close to what brought him to three grand slam titles and I have a hard time seeing he will be back to this form in Marseille. Pouille, on the other hand, won Open Sud de France and is my favourite to win in Marseille.
In Delray Beach (ATP 250) we have Jack Sock as the top seed and Juan Martin Del Potro as the number two seed. There are many dangerous players in Delray Beach however. Shapovalov, Chung and Tiafoe are good representative of the so called “Next generation” and a BIG server such as John Isner is always dangerous. Sock won the title last year but has started 2018 in a poor way after his amazing finish to 2017. Maybe he can find his groove back in Delray Beach? Del Potro has also won the tournament but back in 2011 so he’s definitely a big threat and my pick to win the tournament.
If you want to bet on these tournaments or tennis in general, here are some tennis betting tips.
Which players do you think will be winners this week? Please comment below.Â
