Tennis Picks 2024 (Monday 26th February)

The first week with a winning record was finally produced and that hopefully begins to give the Tennis Picks some momentum to take into the events that are beginning this week.

We have three ATP events, two of those at the 500 level, while the WTA Tour moves to San Diego for a 500 event and Austin for a 250 with the Indian Wells Masters and Miami Masters dominating March.

Some big names are still heading out into the tournaments, but plenty of others will already be thinking ahead to those back to back Masters events that conclude the first part of the hard court season.

After that the clay court season will begin as the run to the French Open gets underway in early April.

Much like last week, the ATP 500 tournament in Dubai will have markets up at a reasonable time, but selections from the other events may have to be placed in the thread after the initial Picks have been written down.

Andrey Rublev - 4.5 games v Zhizhen Zhang: He continues to play at a high level, but Andrey Rublev will have been a little disappointed with a relatively early exit in Doha last week.

He will be playing in Dubai as the Number 2 Seed and Andrey Rublev will need to be playing at a solid level right from the start of the tournament.

First up is Zhizhen Zhang who has reached a career high World Ranking earlier this month, but who has had a couple of subpar tournaments. A very early loss in Rotterdam was followed by a 1-1 performance in Doha, while Zhang is not returning as well as he would like, especially ahead of a match against someone like Andrey Rublev who does have an effective serve.

There is room for improvement as far as the Rublev return game goes, but he may be able to get into a few more rallies against this Zhizhen Zhang serve.

It does feel like a wide spread when you consider Andrey Rublev has just had a few issues converting breaks of serve- he is at 17% in that department this season, but Zhang was put under constant pressure by Karen Khachanov when he played him in Marseille.

The conditions in Dubai felt like they were playing pretty fast last week and so breaks of serve may not be easy to come, but Andrey Rublev is likely to have the better of this match. If he can just take the chances a little more efficiently, Rublev can show his superiority in the match and he can cover.

The first couple of days of this week are going to be busy so any selections from Acapulco, Santiago, San Diego or Austin will only be added below with fuller thoughts on any Picks from Dubai.

Later in the week it should be a bit more time manageable to add a few thoughts to all of the Picks being made.

MY PICKS: Andrey Rublev - 4.5 Games @ 1.95 Coral (2 Units)

Facundo Diaz Acosta - 2.5 Games @ 1.72 Bet365 (2 Units)

Alex De Minaur - 5.5 Games @ 2.05 Coral (2 Units)