Tennis
2019-02-13 - Gael Monfils vs Andreas Seppi
A Sports Betting Pick by FirstDown
Tennis: ATP Rotterdam Second Round
Wednesday 13th February 2019 - Scheduled 12pm
British Time: 11am
Preview
The Second Round gets underway at the ATP Rotterdam tournament on Wednesday and it is Gael Monfils who will be playing on back to back days. He battled hard to get past David Goffin in the First Round and now the Frenchman will be favoured to beat Andreas Seppi in this match.
It has been a good start to 2019 for Monfils who is looking to get his World Ranking moving back in a positive direction. The run to the Semi Final in Sofia last week was important for Monfils and the character shown in the First Round suggests he is looking to back up that week with another strong showing in Rotterdam having reached the Final when he last played in the event.
The serve has been a big weapon for Monfils who is holding at 84% so far in 2019 but he will feel there is some room for improvement when it comes to the return of serve. The percentage of return points won has remained pretty steady since 2017, but Monfils would love to up the break percentage from the current 25% mark he is operating at.
It won't be easy to do that on the hard courts over the course of 2019, but Monfils should have some success facing Andreas Seppi who is holding serve at below 80% on the hard courts so far this season. That is slightly down on his 2017 and 2018 numbers, but the veteran is surely going to take a step back down in level of performance too and this may be the start of that.
The Italian has been returning well enough from the small sample we have from the first six weeks of the season, but Seppi has to find a way to get into the Monfils service games in this Second Round match. He has just been a little inconsistent when it comes to return games over the last few weeks, but Seppi did battle through a difficult First Round match that could give him some confidence to take into the match.
This is actually the seventh time these players are facing one another, but the last of those was some time ago and I am not sure those head to head stats are that relevant. Andreas Seppi beat Gael Monfils when they last met on a hard court in 2012, but that is a long time ago now and I do think Seppi is not quite as good as he once was.
We should be expecting a competitive match between these two players, but it looks like Monfils has a slight edge when it comes to the serve and the return of serve and that should add up to a win for the Frenchman. As long as he is not feeling too tired from his exertions in beating David Goffin I think Monfils is going to be working into a position to beat Andreas Seppi and also cover this number in the victory.
Prediction
Lay the games with the favourite.
The Pick :
Gael Monfils 2-1 Andreas Seppi
FIXED ODDS BETTING TIP :
I'll back Gael Monfils - 2.5 Games at 1.72 with BetFred
