tennis | Thursday, November 10, 2022 8:36 AM

Thursday Tennis Best Bet: ATP Challenger Roanne, Nikoloz Basilashvili vs Mathias Bourgue

Jon Reid

Nikoloz Basilashvili vs Mathias Bourgue Best Bet: Thursday, November 10th

We’ll stick once again with the Challenger in Roanne, France for our selection on Thursday from the men’s side of the tennis world.

It’s Nikoloz Basilashvili – once a top-20 player in the world – taking on Mathias Bourgue, as he looks to build up his form preparing for 2023 after an abysmal 2022 season that has seen his ranking plummet to 96th in the world and that was also mired by personal and legal problems off the court.

In this article:

Nikoloz Basilashvili vs Mathias Bourgue Preview
Nikoloz Basilashvili vs Mathias Bourgue Best Bet

Nikoloz Basilashvili vs Mathias Bourgue Preview

November 10th, 19:30 UK Time

Seeing the Georgian drop down to the Challenger level is a bit shocking, considering how strong his game is. That’s what happens, though, as you near the end of a year that has seen you win two or more matches at a single event just twice in nearly 30 tournaments played.

The inconsistency issues have always been a problem for the 30-year-old, but it was clear there was something more to his struggles in 2022, and his off-court legal battles were likely wearing on him.

Now acquitted back in his home country, Basilashvili has looked a bit more competitive since the beginning of the indoor hard-court season against some of the mid-tier players out there.

There was some value backing him in the markets on Wednesday when he beat Antoine Hoang as a 1.61 favourite, and there’s a case to be made that Hoang has the same big serve and power of Bourgue, but is more athletic and has a few more dimensions to his game than the older Frenchman.

Yet we see Basilashvili now at 1.79 in the betting markets for Thursday’s tilt.

With Basilashvili having more explosiveness from the baseline and just as big – if not a bigger – of a first serve, being far more athletic, and having far more pedigree at the higher levels of the sport, he should be a much larger favourite in this one.

Nikoloz Basilashvili vs Mathias Bourgue Best Bet

The question here is, why have the markets priced this up this way?
Ultimately, it all has to come down to form. We covered Basilashvili’s struggles earlier, but Bourgue has finally found a half-decent run of form in his own right of late. Since the start of October, the Frenchman has posted an 11-2 record indoors.

The caveat? Six of those 11 wins have come in Challenger Tour qualifying matches (draws that are generally populated by ITF players) and a seventh was his first-round encounter with a weaponless ITF lucky loser (that he also beat in qualifying).

The quality of competition for Bourgue simply hasn’t been there during this year, and yet the markets have decided to make a match between two players with a rather large talent disparity a near pick ‘em.

I’ll gladly back the better player here who’s been improving and clearly motivated to regain some form ahead of 2023 at this relatively cheap price.