tennis | Utorak, Mart 7, 2023 12:23 PM (Revised at: Sreda, Mart 8, 2023 12:59 PM)

Tuesday Tennis Best Bet: ATP Indian Wells, Zhizhen Zhang vs Juncheng Shang

Jon Reid

Zhizhen Zhang vs Juncheng Shang Best Bet: Tuesday, March 7th

Leandro Riedi adapted to the slower courts well, as he beat Alex Michelsen in three sets. Luckily, we split the bets since we had half our stake on the over, and even on the Michelsen to win, the market closed at a much shorter price.

For Tuesday, it’s a matchup between two of China’s top men’s tennis players that draws my interest. Let’s delve into the contest between Zhizhen Zhang and Juncheng Shang.

In this article:

Zhizhen Zhang vs Juncheng Shang Preview
Zhizhen Zhang vs Juncheng Shang Best Bet

Zhizhen Zhang vs Juncheng Shang Preview

March 7th, 22:30 (UK Time)

It’s the final round of qualifying from Tennis Paradise in the desert of California.

With Indian Wells being a Masters event, there’s plenty on the line for all those involved in potentially reaching a Masters 1000 main draw. To make matters more enticing, the top players in the world all have byes to the second round, so there’s a decent chance qualifiers could end up with a manageable opening match.

It’s been a rough start to the season for Zhang, who burst onto the Challenger Tour scene a year ago, and has even reached the top 100 in the rankings. He has a fairly aggressive game, but as players have adjusted within matches this season, Zhang has had very little in the way of a “Plan B.” That has led to a 2-8 record (one of those wins being a tight one over Elias Ymer, who often looks thoroughly uninterested on court, yesterday) and a slew of losses from leading positions in matches.

It was his play on the slower courts of Koblenz that has been rather shocking though. After slugging his way to a lead against Zdenek Kolar, the underpowered clay courter managed to spot serve well and completely neutralise Zhang’s return game. He also recognised patterns in his hitting and managed to get everything back, leading to a frustrated Zhang who committed plenty of errors.

Blown leads in Montpellier on quick courts that favoured his style against Marco Trungelliti (not known by any means as a strong quick-court player) and in Doha against Alexandre Muller (a very similar profile to Kolar) were also noteworthy results.

Shang is a left-handed player that should stack up well on slower courts against someone like Zhang. He has the rally tolerance from the baseline to force Zhang to hit a ton of balls. He can turn up the pace behind the first serve and on his inside-out forehands, as we saw down under. He also plays with spin though and is more prone to success on slower courts in the past.

All this is to say that the 18-year-old should be favoured against his countryman that has been well below the standards he’d expect of himself so far in 2023.

Zhizhen Zhang vs Juncheng Shang Best Bet

I think the younger of the two promising Chinese players has proven enough over the last two years in qualifying matches that he’s being undervalued in these kinds of situations. He’s now 3-0 in Indian Wells qualifying matches between the 2022 event and one match this year. He was priced 2.80 or higher in each of those three wins. He’s not in that range today, but it speaks to the pattern of him being consistently undervalued by the markets in these conditions and against this level of competition.

With a game more naturally suited to the conditions and a better 2023 season to this point, I have Shang as a favourite in this one, as opposed to the coin-flip odds we’re seeing in the market at the moment.