tennis | Wednesday, February 22, 2023 9:48 AM

Wednesday Tennis Best Bet: ATP Doha, Botic van de Zandschulp vs Alexandre Muller

Jon Reid

Botic van de Zandschulp vs Alexandre Muller Best Bet: Wednesday, February 22nd

No update on Tuesday’s play from Rio de Janeiro, as rain began pouring down before Bernabe Zapata Miralles and Jaume Munar took to the court.

That match will happen on Wednesday now, so that bet remains live and will just be played a day later from Brazil.

For Wednesday’s selection, we’ll look at a match from Doha, featuring world No. 34 Botic van de Zandschulp and Alexandre Muller, who is into the second round of an ATP Tour or grand slam event for just the second time in his career.

In this article:

Botic van de Zandschulp vs Alexandre Muller Preview
Botic van de Zandschulp vs Alexandre Muller Best Bet

Botic van de Zandschulp vs Alexandre Muller Preview

February 22nd, 13:00 (UK Time)

Some kind of luck, or sheer determination for Muller to find himself in the second round of this event in Doha. Consider the path he’s taken to get here, and it’s remarkable he hasn’t been sent packing to this point (statistically it’s surprising as well, but more on that later).

He began in qualifying, where he trailed by a set and break to Zhizhen Zhang, before the pro from China completely collapsed and lost his third straight match from a set up.

Then it was Tomas Machac who led by a set and break, before playing copycat with Zhang and losing the second set in a tiebreak and wilting away in the decider.

Finally, it was the mercurial and borderline ball-bashing Nikoloz Basilashvili who led each of the first two sets 5-3 and then 2-0 in the decider and somehow managed to lose two of the three sets.

It’s not just the luck it’s taken to overcome incredibly long odds in-play either. Muller’s game simply isn’t suited for hard courts, let alone against legitimate tour-level opposition. His first serve is strong, but his second serve is a sitting duck more often than not. He doesn’t really possess any weapons to finish points from the baseline and his consistency is decent, but nothing to write home about.

Against emerging talents, fellow Challenger players and a former tour-level opponent who has dropped out of the top-100 with incredible efficiency, he snuck out three wins. Against the Dutchman, I don’t think he’ll be so lucky.

Van de Zandschulp is a well-rounded player, with a decent serve, the ability to inject pace into his groundstrokes, solidity from the baseline and is really strong at working the outer thirds of the court to open up space for himself to hit through.

As a solid top-40 player in the world, it’s taken other players that play consistently at tour level to beat him. More often than not those players have at least one weapon to fall back on to finish points against him and keep the match off his racquet.

Botic van de Zandschulp vs Alexandre Muller Best Bet

From a statistical standpoint, it’s hard to compare these two. After all, the Dutchman has spent the past few years playing at the highest levels of the game, while his French counterpart has played almost exclusively at the Challenger Tour level.

In their respective careers, however, van de Zandschulp holds a solid hold plus break percentage lead on hard courts at the ATP level, while the differences in elo ratings tell the real story.

Van de Zandschulp holds an advantage of over 330 points in the raw hard-court elo rating and the blended rating best used for head-to-head matchup analysis? Also over 300 points.

From statistical edges, to matchup, to hard-court pedigree at this level, to the route they’ve taken to get to this point, van de Zandschulp is a massive favourite for me. I have him as the rare player deserving of a -5 to -5.5-game handicap, so the -4 on offer is going to be one of my larger positions of the season.

Selection: van de Zandschulp -4 games
Best Odds: 1.88 (Pinnacle)
Stakes: 6/10
Bonus: van de Zandschulp -4.5 games at 2.17 with Coolbet, using 2/10 stakes.

Odds as at 2:30 am UK Time on February 22nd, 2022. Odds may now differ.

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