tennis | Tuesday, April 11, 2023 8:55 AM

Tuesday Tennis Bonus Best Bet: ATP Challenger Split, Shintaro Mochizuki vs Harold Mayot

Jon Reid

Shintaro Mochizuki vs Harold Mayot Best Bet: Tuesday, April 11th

Lorenzo Giustino made things interesting after being a set and break up against Omar Jasika, but he got it done with a dominant third set to cash both bets.

Onto Tuesday, where we’ll look at the match between Shintaro Mochizuki and Harold Mayot from the Croatian city of Split.

In this article:

Shintaro Mochizuki vs Harold Mayot Preview
Shintaro Mochizuki vs Harold Mayot Best Bet

Shintaro Mochizuki vs Harold Mayot Preview

April 11th, 12:00 (UK Time)

Good on Mochizuki for claiming his first-ever Challenger Tour title last week in Barletta, Italy. He did so on clay, which makes it even more impressive, considering the young gun has been known to be more of a hard courter in the early stages of his career.

It makes sense he can find success on clay though, considering the foundational aspect of his game is his rock-solid play from the baseline.

He doesn’t have many (or any) weapons to speak of. The serve is vulnerable and he won’t dictate often in baseline exchanges.

Sure he found a title a week ago, but his overall CV on the dirt has been pretty underwhelming.

Last season saw losses on the dirt to players like Henri Squire (tall, immobile server), Remy Bertola (journeyman), Filip Peliwo (ITF regular) and Benjamin Winter Lopez (currently ranked outside the top-700). Let’s not get ahead of our skis when it comes to declaring him a regular contender on the clay courts at this level.

There’s also the fact that it’s his first long week playing against Challenger Tour level competition. One has to wonder if he may be a bit leggy in this match as the time on court adds up.

Finally, his opponent is a good young talent in his own right.

Harold Mayot had a lot of success at the junior level and has a well-rounded game that can play on multiple surfaces.

He made the Tampere Challenger final late last season (as a qualifier and picking up some nice underdog wins en route), and should be able to stick around in longer rallies while finding it easier to dictate behind his serve.

Shintaro Mochizuki vs Harold Mayot Best Bet

After a week of success at this level and a maiden Challenger title, the market is obviously keen to back the Japanese player to continue his success. In fact, Pinnacle opened the Mayot to win price at 1.71 and it has drifted all the way out to 2.08.

I think that presents a solid opportunity to oppose him here, as his success has led to an overvaluation, the title remains an outlier for the time being on clay courts for Mochizuki, we have a competent and talented opponent at underdog odds to back against him and we haven’t really seen him back up a long week at this level before in his career.

Give me Mayot to end the win streak on Tuesday.