Monte Carlo Rolex Masters Betting: Rafa to hand out a clay court lesson to Dimitrov

19Apr 2013

ATP Masters 1000

Sean Calvert has been in fine tipping form all week and on quarter finals day in the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters he's backing Rafa Nadal to ease past Grigor Dimitrov...

It was another profitable day on Thursday in what's turning out to be an excellent week so far at the 2013 Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, as my recommended bet was an easy winner.

Those laying Andy Murray to beat Stan Wawrinka 2-0 were in the money early on as the Swiss crushed the Scot for the loss of just three games.

It wasn't a great display from Murray, who goes back to the drawing board after another disappointing tournament on clay, but Wawrinka was excellent and never looked like relinquishing his early advantage.

On to Friday and one of the most attractive-looking matches on paper today is surely Rafa Nadal vs Grigor Dimitrov and this is the first meeting between this pair on clay and first on any surface since 2009.

Those who followed my preview of yesterday's Nadal match would have collected on opponent Philipp Kohlschreiber with a 7.5 game start on the handicap and this is a similar sort of task for Nadal.

Like the German, Dimitrov has the one-handed backhand and it will come under a lot of pressure today, which means Dimitrov's only hope is for all out attack on the forehand.

In turn, this may mean that Grigor will be tempted to run around his backhand, as he has a tendency of doing anyway, and if he doesn't hit a clean winner he's toast.

Dimitrov, for all of his talent and potential is yet to beat a top-five ranked player and he's won just three of 23 matches against top-10 ranked players, with one of those wins coming this week over Janko Tipsarevic.

Rafa is 20-0 in quarter finals of Masters 1000s on clay and he's only ever dropped a single set in those matches, which was to Radek Stepanek in Rome in 2005, so Dimitrov has a huge task on his plate today.

The last time that the Pearl de Manacor was taken beyond today's total games mark of 17.5 in Masters 1000 quarter finals on the dirt was by Juan Carlos Ferrero here in Monte-Carlo in 2010 and that was a 6-4, 6-2 win and I'm not sure that I like this match-up for Dimitrov.

My 65.0 pre-tournament advice of backing Richard Gasquet would obviously benefit from a shock Nadal defeat, but I don't see it happening and I think he'll win this one quite comfortably and the under 17.5 total games looks good at a price of 2.1.