Andreas Seppi vs Bernard Tomic Expert ATP Picks - 6/24/2019

Andreas Seppi vs Bernard Tomic

6 am EST, 24th June 2019

ATP Antalya, Turkey

Grass courts

After struggles he went through during the clay court part of the season, Andreas Seppi welcomed the grass court swing with open arms. As expected, he managed to end his 10-match losing streak and started to play much better in these conditions. That was very much expected with his 57% win rate (and a title) on the grass. And it seems like he's building up some momentum, which could help him make a big run in Antalya. In Hertogenbosch, he barely defeated Fabbiano before losing to De Minaur. But in Halle, he cruised through the qualifying rounds, before eliminating Mats Moraing in the first round of the main draw and then pushing red-hot Matteo Berrettini to the limit in the second round. He was set up and had some opportunities in the first half of the second set, which he failed to convert. Playing against one of the currently hottest players on the tour, it was only fitting to get punished for those missed opportunities and lose in three sets. He made an interesting decision, not to play here in 2018, after doing really well in 2017, when he reached the semifinals. Suffering a first-round loss in Eastbourne last year, he decided to return back to Antalya for his Wimbledon "dress rehearsal".

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Bernard Tomic is another guy from whom it was expected to play much better once the grass court season starts, but that didn't happen. He struggled even at the challenger level, losing to Granollers in the 2nd round of Surbiton and to Ryan Penniston in the first round of Nottingham. The later was a textbook tank-job by the Aussie. The weather was not cooperating with the organizers in Nottingham for first couple of days, so they decided to move the play indoors, where only the carpet surface was available. With Tomic in the Queen's club qualifying draw later that week, it as obvious that he is not going to try too hard to win that match and he indeed retired as soon as he lost the first set. That move gave no results since he lost to Davidovich Fokina in round 1 of the mentioned qualifiers in London. Years of slacking off and trying to win with no, or minimal effort put in, has finally caught up with Tomic. He's at the point in his career where talent alone is not enough anymore to bail him out of some situations and if he doesn't change something drastically in his approach, he's going to continue sliding down the rankings and probably retire soon.

Matchup

Playing conditions in Antalya should be pretty demanding with temperatures exceeding 35 degrees Celsius in the afternoon. Known as someone that is not dealing well with the heat (or any kind of other non-perfect conditions), it should hurt Tomic's chances for the win in this one. Not to be completely biased, we have to also say that warm weather also helps him in some ways, because he can hit the ball with velocity which can get difficult to defend against in such conditions. But if there is something Seppi can do well, it's creating traps for aggressive players to fall into. He is very intelligent with point constructing on grass courts, where he'll try to put the ball in places from which it's difficult to attack. Berrettini struggled with that quite a bit last week and Tomic should as well.

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Betting odds & prediction

Seppi opened pretty cheaply at -150 but that got hammered down to -225. Obviously, nobody is excited about getting behind Bernard Tomic, not knowing in what mood he'll wake up that morning. After this move, I don't think there's any value left with Italian. Personally, I'm looking at the total, which is sitting at 22 at the moment. Even though I trust Tomic as far as I can throw him, I still think 22 is too low. He can still string a couple of games of good tennis together and steal a set.

Josh's Pick: over 22 games (-119)

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