tennis | Tuesday, June 7, 2022 10:01 PM (Revised at: Wednesday, June 8, 2022 4:23 PM)

Wednesday's ATP Tennis Best Bet: Stuttgart, June 8th

Jon Reid

ATP Stuttgart Open Best Bet: Sonego vs Struff

Wednesday, June 8th, 13:00 UK Time

Much like the previous matchup in Stuttgart, looking to attack a game total on Wednesday that appears to be about a game too low.

After an absolutely horrendous start to the year, that saw him win his second match in Australia at the ATP Cup and then nothing more, Jan Lennard Struff finally found a win in his opening match in a tight contest with American Marcos Giron.

It was his first match back from injury – he hadn’t played since the second half of March in Miami – and it was an impressive display given his prior form and having been away for a few months.

With an ace rate over 20% and winning over 60% of points behind his second serve, he held all but three of his 18 service games.

This time out he’ll play Lorenzo Sonego, who has a title on the grass from 2019 – though that was a weaker tournament in Turkey and accounted for his only wins that season – and is much better than most would have expected.

Armed with a big serve of his own and a forehand capable of finishing points quickly, he shouldn’t find too much trouble holding serve against his German counterpart, whose break percentage a year ago was in single digits.

Ultimately, these two should play out a similar match to the one Struff had in his opening round, with breaks relatively scarce and lengthy sets.

With the preponderance of 12 and 13-game sets, we’ve seen during the early stages of this grass season, exploiting game totals below 24.5 games in matches that involve strong servers like this is a must. Adding higher alternative totals at available books using lower stakes would also be advisable in some of these matches. It’s always a good idea to try and take advantage of these situations before the bookmakers do, in fact, make the proper adjustments in the coming weeks.