tennis | Friday, May 5, 2023 7:56 AM

Friday Tennis Best Bet: ATP Challenger Cagliari, Borna Gojo vs Daniel Galan

Jon Reid

Borna Gojo vs Daniel Galan Best Bet: Friday, May 5th

Broken seven times by Joao Lucas Reis da Silva when not playing at altitude is some kind of poor performance from Nick Hardt. He did force a third set but even blew a double-break lead in the second to ensure he was never in the driver’s seat.

As the failures continue to pile up, let’s move to Friday, where we’ll look at the match between Borna Gojo and Daniel Galan from the Challenger event in Cagliari.

In this article:

Borna Gojo vs Daniel Galan Preview
Borna Gojo vs Daniel Galan Best Bet

Borna Gojo vs Daniel Galan Preview

May 5th, 11:30 (UK Time)

This should be a fun matchup on the island of Sardinia.

While his game is more conducive to hard courts, Gojo isn’t afraid to play on the dirt, and showcased his ability by reaching the Murcia Challenger final a few weeks ago, before putting together this run to the semifinal.

That said, I don’t think that the matchup is nearly as good for him this time around.

After being priced in the 1.95 region against a hard courter who had a few wins in Madrid (at elevation) and in Houston (played on quicker har-tru clay), he’s now priced as a favourite against a more natural clay-court player in Galan.

The 26-year-old may have started his 2023 season in abysmal form (on all surfaces), but he’s finding his range and has been pretty solid of late, reaching a Challenger final on quicker clay in Sarasota, losing in a tight three-setter to the big-serving Alexander Bublik in the quicker conditions of Madrid and has now beaten two decent competitors in Italian young gun Flavio Cobolli and top-35 Yoshihito Nishioka.

I have Galan the favourite entering this matchup.

Borna Gojo vs Daniel Galan Best Bet

Not sure what metric the market has used here to give Gojo as much or, or a better chance to win this match.

The more natural clay player is Galan, the Colombian has also had a more impressive run to the quarterfinals this week, he isn’t bothered by big hitting on the dirt and though Galan has played one more set in his two matches, it’s Gojo that has been on the court longer.

That’s key for a few reasons. First, Galan is the more athletic of the two and the better mover. The second is that Gojo really tailed off in his second set against Yosuke Watanuki on Thursday. Watanuki is by no means a clay courter – especially without quicker courts or altitude to help his flatter, hard-court centric game – and he had an early lead in that second set and was working his way into far more Gojo service games.

It’s also worth noting that Gojo took a medical timeout in that second set.

Finally, it’s rare you see the underdog in any given matchup with the higher elo rating as Galan has here. Shift from the blended elo to the surface-specific rating and the gap only grows.

I’ll back Galan big in this one at the current price.