tennis | Sreda, Jun 28, 2023 7:43 AM

Wednesday Tennis Best Bet: ATP Wimbledon, Dennis Novak vs Charles Broom

Jon Reid

Dennis Novak vs Charles Broom Best Bet: Wednesday, June 28th

Two losses again on the writeups, despite a positive day for my other posted bets. Absolutely incredible how these writeups start well and fall apart on a relatively consistent basis! Daniel Galan had break points late in the opening set, didn’t take them and in the very next game was broken from 40-15 up by one of the worst returners on tour. You couldn’t script these losses to be more unlikely. Incredible stuff, truly.

For Wednesday, we’ll look at the qualifying draw for Wimbledon at Roehampton and preview the match between Dennis Novak and Charles Broom.

In this article:

Dennis Novak vs Charles Broom Preview
Dennis Novak vs Charles Broom Best Bet

Dennis Novak vs Charles Broom Preview

June 28th, 12:30 (UK Time)

It took a while for the 25-year-old Brit Broom, but he finally took advantage of one of his chances on home soil to make a decent run on the grass.

In an interview with the Challenger Tour, he mentioned that he feels like he serves well, hits flat and likes staying low and feels like he’s finally ready to make more consistent progress on grass. He reached the quarterfinals as a qualifier last week in Ilkley…but that’s the extent of his impressive play on the surface.

The one thing he can take away from that event is that he did beat his opponent in Wimbledon’s second qualifying round in Novak (more on how that win may be affecting this market in a bit). Other than that, the wins weren’t all that impressive and his other grass-court event appearances were nothing to write home about either.

Outside of his first serve, his game is rather middling, which explains why his career-high ranking is still outside the top-350, despite him already being 25.

Even his opening-round match at Roehampton required a third set as a 1.20 favourite against a clay-court specialist in Alessandro Giannessi.

Novak, on the other hand, has reached a much higher level and when he’s healthy is a contender at most Challenger tournaments that he enters. Despite the loss to Broom in Ilkley, his baseline game is far superior, he has more power to take advantage of the grass courts and he should be able to exact revenge for that loss on Wednesday.

Dennis Novak vs Charles Broom Best Bet

It’s going to be tough to make a case to me that Broom shouldn’t be at least a 3.5-game underdog on the handicap to someone like Novak.

About the only thing to indicate he would keep closer than that is one solid serving week in Ilkley at the Challenger Tour event. Not to take too much away from him, but most players he took down weren’t that great, and while he did beat Novak in that event, that appears to be weighed too heavily here.

He still struggled mightily last year in most Challenger events, as well as the two events prior to Ilkley and in his loss, bets on the handicap voided, and that only happened because Zsombor Piros was far from 100% physically and failed to serve out the match to cover the handicap.

That head-to-head win over Novak is depressing the handicap here. Novak is a far more talented player, has qualified here before and should be a 3.5-game to 4-game favourite, especially considering the last time these two played on grass it was an expensive 3.5 games. This is a major overreaction for my money.