tennis | Wednesday, May 10, 2023 7:53 AM (Revised at: Wednesday, May 10, 2023 7:54 AM)

Wednesday Tennis Best Bet: ATP Rome, Richard Gasquet vs Yibing Wu

Jon Reid

Richard Gasquet vs Yibing Wu Best Bet: Wednesday, May 10th

Incredible stuff from Arthur Fils, who seems to progress with each passing match on the dirt. Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to his first-round match with fellow qualifier Juan Manuel Cerundolo.

For Wednesday though, we’ll take a look at the match between Richard Gasquet and Yibing Wu as the main draw gets going for the men.

In this article:

Richard Gasquet vs Yibing Wu Preview
Richard Gasquet vs Yibing Wu Best Bet

Richard Gasquet vs Yibing Wu Preview

May 10th, 11:30 (UK Time)

Rather surprised to see Gasquet in the 1.40-1.50 odds range here. I understand that he’s ageing and may not be the player he was 10 years ago and that Wu is on the ascent, but on a clay court, his implied probability to win this match should be much higher.

For starters, the gap in experience and pedigree on red clay courts is as vast as you’ll see in a Masters 1000 event.

Secondly, the young pro from China has not looked at his best physically since the Miami Masters event well over a month ago.

Finally, the matchup favours the wily veteran in this contest in a big way.

The native of southern France has a game extremely well-suited to clay courts. He moves the ball around beautifully, hits with incredible amounts of topspin and generates some superb angles. All things that are typically associated with clay-court success.

Contrast that with Wu, who doesn’t look the most comfortable when being forced to slide, isn’t as used to the movement on the surface and plays an aggressive, flat-hitting style and you can see the difference in the likelihood to succeed for each man in this match.

Wu has also been pretty poor of late. Whether the potential fatigue or physical issues or just a lack of ability on clay, he’s played just four sets so far this year on the dirt and has won a total of 10 games.

His losses have both been lopsided, and one could make the case that Gasquet is as good or better than both men who beat him.

The combination of Gasquet’s heavy topspin and hitting to the outer thirds of the court, along with Wu’s unnatural sliding should pose major problems for Wu when Gasquet is in control of points.

From a statistical perspective, the blended elo rating here favours the Frenchman by 120 points.

With someone like Wu – whose results are so polarised depending on the surface he’s playing on, I do like to look at the raw clay elo rating.

The difference there? A whopping 280 points. Per Tennis Abstract, a 300-point elo gap would imply the favourite has an 85% chance to win the match. That comes back to the point I made earlier about the 1.44 price point not going nearly far enough.

Richard Gasquet vs Yibing Wu Best Bet

I’m going to load up on the veteran in this matchup.

He’s far more experienced on clay, doesn’t have the physical questions surrounding his recent play that his younger opponent does, and his style could give Wu absolute fits with the slower, high-bouncing courts.

With how poor Wu has been in conditions that should’ve helped ease his transition to the dirt in Madrid, I can’t see things getting any better at sea level in the Italian capital.