No complaints from my first venture into the tennis markets this week as both picks came up trumps, including Frederico Gil winning his match as the big underdog.
Hopefully I will continue to enjoy that success today with the following picks. There are a couple of the later matches at Barcelona that did catch my eye, but not all the markets are available so I will post a link to the thread on Twitter if I make any additions in the morning once they are available.
Santiago Giraldo v Robin Haase: I am going to pick Santiago Giraldo as the slight favourite to come through this contest despite Robin Haase's successes at Monte Carlo last week.
Giraldo played well here at Barcelona last season when reaching the Third Round before losing to Rafael Nadal, and recorded a decent win over Denis Istomin in the First Round this year. His best form is reserved for the clay courts in the main, performing well on the Main Tour and in Challenger events.
Haase is adept at playing on the slower surfaces himself, but can be a little hit and miss as highlighted by the fact he won a title on the clay courts in Kitzbuhel, but was also an early loser here in Barcelona as well as at the French Open, Hamburg and Umag.
Giraldo also has won their only head to head in the past and looks a little big at the prices on offer.
Potito Starace - 5.5 games v Attila Balazs: Potito Starace is still more than a little useful on the clay courts and I think he is going to have far too much know-how and experience for Attila Balazs who is very much not used to playing at this level.
Balazs did record a big surprise win over Lukas Lacko in the last Round having qualified, but there is nothing in his results to suggest he will be good enough to keep up with Starace.
Starace was a comfortable winner in the last Round against Jeremy Chardy and it is on the clay courts that he continues to be at his most competitive. I think the Italian still can deal with these kind of matches and should be able to record a couple of breaks in a single set to cover the spread.
Victor Troicki - 3 games Matthias Bachinger: Victor Troicki has dropped out of the top 20 in the World Rankings due to a horrible run of form and so I think people cannot trust him at the moment to put in a good performance, but a lot of his bad results have come against the better players and not the likes of Matthias Bachinger.
Bachinger is ranked outside of the top 100 in the Men's Rankings, and he is just 5-6 on the clay courts since the beginning of the 2011 season.
It is clear that the German barely likes this time of the season, although he did register an impressive looking win over Filippo Volandri, but Victor Troicki should still be too strong for him as long as he has not completely lost it mentally on a tennis court.
Troicki is still managing to beat some of the lesser known players at the moment, including a win over Bachinger in two straight sets at the start of the season.
The Serb is also had a much more successful career, relatively, on the clay courts compared with Bachinger so I will take my chance on him.
MY PICKS: Santiago Giraldo @ 1.80 Stan James (2 Units) Playing in Barcelona
Potito Starace - 5.5 Games @ 2.10 Bet365 (2 Units) Playing in Bucharest
Victor Troicki - 3 Games @ 1.95 Pinnacle (2 Units) Playing in Bucharest
Weekly Update: 2-0, + 3.41 Units (3 Units Staked)
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