Sho Shimabukuro vs Nicolas Mejia Prediction, Picks, Odds, H2H, July 11th

The men have the day off at Wimbledon, so we’ll look to the Winnipeg National Bank Challenger for one of our previews on Thursday. Let’s look more at Sho Shimabukuro vs Nicolas Mejia.

Mejia’s win probability is 42.5%, while Shimabukuro is favored to win at 1.62 odds. The handicap is three games and the total game line is 21.5.

Our Shimabukuro vs Mejia prediction is for Shimabukuro to pick up a strong victory.

Sho Shimabukuro vs Nicolas Mejia Prediction: Favourite With Big Advantage on Hard Courts

• Predictions: Shimabukuro to win & Shimabukuro -3 Games
• Best Odds: 1.62 & 2.03
• Bookmaker: Pinnacle
• Stakes: 4/10 & 2/10

Odds updated at 1:00 am UK Time on July 11th, 2024.

The upside to no men’s tennis at Wimbledon? We can finally get back to previews that have bets with value! This is the first match of the day on the main court in Winnipeg and it’s one I like for a few reasons.

Shimabukuro should be much closer to 1.50 here than 1.62 and that means I also like the handicap, as I think that the number is off by at least a half-game.

The Japanese is simply the better of the two from the baseline and without altitude, Mejia’s game becomes rather weaponless and exploitable. I’ll happily oppose him at these odds.

More previews are available over on the expert insights page.

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Sho Shimabukuro Recent Form

The start to the season for the 26-year-old was one to forget, with just a few match wins on the board through mid-April. A quarterfinal run at the ATP Challenger stop in Gwangju, South Korea may have sparked him though. Forget the clay season, as his flat-hitting style and preference for hard courts mean the clay swing is rarely going to go well for him.

Grass season saw him win a few qualifying matches in Nottingham at a Challenger, before being drawn against Cam Norrie in the first round (he acquitted himself well, taking that to a decider) and then almost qualifying for Wimbledon. 

Now back on hard courts in North America, where fields don’t tend to be as tough, he started off with a fairly dominant win against Illya Marchenko.

I have him as a big favorite in this one, with his game much more attack-oriented in baseline exchanges than Mejia, and I’d have this handicap around -3.5. We can get the -3 at over evens, which is a must-bet kind of proposition for me.

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Nicolas Mejia Recent Form

Perhaps Mejia’s form is the reason for the markets having him as a slight underdog in this one against Shimabukuro. He very well could just outlast him from the baseline and be the beneficiary of an error-prone day from his opponent.

As always, context is important though. Mejia has very few wins above the ITF level in tournaments that aren’t held at altitude. He loves playing in cities that are way up, as his serve becomes much more of a weapon, and his ability to control his groundstrokes in the thinner air is rewarded.

In every other Challenger tournament he’s played at this level though, he’s been out in either qualifying, the first round or the second round. Even at this tournament, he lost in qualifying before getting in as a lucky loser and beating the same man who got him in the second round of qualifying.

I don’t think he has enough to be given a greater than 40% chance in this matchup.

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Sho Shimabukuro vs Nicolas Mejia H2H – Stat of the Match

This is the first meeting between the two. Shimabukuro leads in hard court elo rating (the blended rating) by about 45 points. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that while Elo rating does take into account the quality of players you come up against, it doesn’t factor in things like altitude or conditions.

That means it has a blind spot in the case of someone like Mejia, who only has one or two Challenger wins this season when not playing at elevation. I think that leaves us with a chance to pounce and take advantage of what I believe is an inefficient market.

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Safer Gambling

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