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tennis | Friday, January 12, 2024 10:14 AM (Revised at: Friday, January 12, 2024 10:15 AM)
Tennis Picks Today for January 12th: Free Tennis Picks, Odds, Stats
Jon Reid
3
Tennis Picks Today: January 12th
- Damm vs Copil: Damm -1.5
- Riedi vs Elias: Riedi -2.5
Nice stuff from Mateus Alves who started slowly but really worked his way into the match. Renzo Olivo had a set point in the first, but lost it and crumbled the rest of the way.
For our last preview article of the week, it’s back to the European Oeiras Indoor 2 Challenger tournament to delve into Martin Damm vs Marius Copil and Leandro Riedi vs Gastao Elias.
For more daily tennis tips, visit the bettingexpert community, but if you want more expert tips from Jon Reid, visit our Expert Insights section.
In this article:
- Martin Damm vs Marius Copil Expert Tip
- Martin Damm Recent Form
- Marius Copil Recent Form
- Martin Damm vs Marius Copil H2H Stat of the Match
- Leandro Riedi vs Gastao Elias Expert Tip
- Leandro Riedi Recent Form
- Gastao Elias Recent Form
- Leandro Riedi vs Gastao Elias H2H Stat of the Match
- Safer Gambling
Martin Damm vs Marius Copil (Oeiras Indoor 2) Free Pick: Huge Lefty Serve to Overpower Veteran Copil
- Pick: Damm -1.5 games
- Best Odds: 1.83
- Bookmaker: bet365
- Stakes: 6/10
Odds as at 3:00 am UK Time on January 12th, 2023. Odds may now differ.
He’s on a better career trajectory.
The one thing Copil does well (serve) is overshadowed in a big way by Damm.
Finally, Damm has the better backhand at this point and is a better returner (though that’s a low bar to clear and he’s still not great in that respect.
Yes, this one could be very tight just by virtue of the serves involved. The way that Damm has been playing, however and the fact that Copil’s level on serve could drop at any moment if fatigue sets in, means I’m willing to give up the smallest of head starts.
Read on for more expert insights.
Martin Damm Recent Form
Known to those in the tennis community for a few years now, Damm was one of the juniors from the United States that has seen his progress look more like a slow burn than a sudden burst onto the stage.
His size and monster lefty first serve caught people’s eyes from a young age, but his movement and raw game from the baseline placed certain limitations on his game that slowed his progress compared to some of the other talented 20-year-olds on the men’s tour.
Last season saw the big southpaw take a step forward, however, and this week he’s begun his 2024 season with some impressive results in Portugal.
He appears to be moving a tad more efficiently than he had in the past and he’s far more capable of sticking around in longer baseline exchanges, adding a bit more dimension to his game.
As for the serve? It hasn’t missed a beat. He cranked 20 aces out in the quarterfinals against Joao Sousa, and he should be able to replicate that performance against an even poorer returner in Copil on Friday.
What’s most impressive though, is that given his size and serve-centric game, he’s actually been able to break serve on a rather consistent basis – even in the quicker conditions in Oeiras.
That’ll be tougher against Copil, but as I mentioned earlier, he cancels out Copil’s lone strength, while having the advantage just about everywhere else in the matchup.
Marius Copil Recent Form
Credit where it’s due for 33-year-old Romanian. The former top-60 player is now outside the top-300, but still grinding away, looking for quicker courts to play on and give himself a chance to keep playing the game he loves.
Nowadays, the movement has really deteriorated and other than his first serve, he struggles mightily to win points of his own accord.
The backhand slice is somewhat effective in coaxing errors from opponents, but the one-handed backhand provides him with very little in attack and tends to sit up in the court and be rather vulnerable.
Finally, seeing as he had to come through qualifying, Copil has already played five matches in as many days, with a few absolute slugfests against the likes of Adrian Andreev in the opening round and Alejandro Moro Canas.
The time on court in those five matches? Over 11 hours, including over 3.5 hours on Thursday and over eight hours of play in the last three days.
At some point, the 33-year-old is going to run out of energy – especially as a match wears on where he has to consistently try to return the power coming from Damm’s racquet.
Martin Damm vs Marius Copil H2H – Stat of the Match
No prior head-to-head. Ultimately these are two very similar players, with one being much younger, more dynamic, playing better tennis and having exerted far less energy on court so far this week.
Leandro Riedi vs Gastao Elias (Oeiras Indoor 2) Free Pick: Elias’ Portuguese Run to Come to an End
- Pick: Riedi -2.5 games
- Best Odds: 1.97
- Bookmaker: Pinnacle
- Stakes: 4/10
Odds as at 3:00 am UK Time on January 12th, 2023. Odds may now differ.
He’s got a huge game, excellent form to open his 2024 season and is taking on a veteran who can be just as erratic as him at times and has played a lot of tennis in recent days and dating back to last week in Oeiras.
This handicap implies, for all intents and purposes, that Riedi is one break of serve better than than his veteran counterpart. I think he’s an even larger favourite than that all things considered.
Read on for more expert insights.
Leandro Riedi Recent Form
It’s the first week of action of the 2024 season for Riedi, after a year that saw him play fairly sparingly and end the year in horrible form, with his ranking plummeting out of the world’s top 300.
With the soon-to-be 22-year-old, it’s not so much a question of talent, so much as whether he can replicate his strong matches with a style that is tough to sustain.
He has a huge serve and crushes the ball from the baseline, but he leaves very little room between the net and the ball, which leaves him with very little margin for error and with high error counts in matches that feature a slew of longer rallies.
When he’s clicking, he can upset almost anyone though, and we’ve seen what he can do when in form this week.
To this point, he’s 3-0 including his run through qualifying. He hasn’t dropped a set yet in Oeiras and each of the six sets has been won by a score of 6-3 or better.
I’m going to back him here to keep the fine run of form going.
Gastao Elias Recent Form
The 30-year-old has been on an absolute tear playing in front of his home crowd.
Not only did he reach the final of the Challenger 50 last week, but he’s followed that up with a run to the semis of this week’s Challenger 75 (which has sported a slightly tougher field).
Much like the youngster he’ll find on the other side of the net, Elias plays a relatively low-margin, aggressive style.
When his game is on, the ball striking is a joy to watch. It does mean he can be prone to hitting a lot of unforced errors, though.
I also think all the tennis of the last few weeks has been catching up to him in recent matches.
In the second round, he needed to come back from a set down and then a breakdown in the deciding set against young American Ethan Quinn (who doesn’t really possess all that much power, but who was able to get out to a few leads against Elias). In the quarters, he was able to exploit the incredibly erratic game of Valentin Royer, but he was far from perfect, needing nearly two hours to complete a straight-set victory. He was under pressure on serve consistently and him coming through was more a product of his opponent’s poor play on break point chances, high unforced error rate and some incredibly lucky desperation returns that landed plum on the baseline, making it hard for Royer to go for a big plus-one follow up shot.
Now taking on the best server he’s seen this fortnight, who likes quick courts while potentially running out of gas, I think it’ll be hard for him to book his ticket into a second final in as many weeks.
Leandro Riedi vs Gastao Elias H2H – Stat of the Match
No prior meetings between these two.
In what should be a big-hitting extravaganza, I’m torn between wanting to see an entertaining match between two guys who can crush the ball, and wanting to see a relatively boring match that has Riedi winning with ease.
I think I’ll take the latter, thank you very much!
SAFER GAMBLING
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