ATP Rotterdam Men Singles 2010
Tennis : Netherlands

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Preview

This the the first ATP 500 event of the season, the 3rd highest level on the Professional tour behind the Grand Slam events and the Masters Series Events. However, due to injury and fatigue, only 3 members of the Worlds top 10 will be taking part here in the Netherlands.

The top seeds here are Novak Djokovic and Nikolay Davydenko. Djokovic is taking part in his first tour event since losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the Australian Open when it seemed an illness forced him to not play to a high enough level consistently and ended in a 5 set defeat.

Davydenko has started the year in awesome form, following on from a strong end to last season, and he was very likely to be disappointed in losing to Roger Federer in Australia after leading a set and a break in the 2nd, also only being a point away from having 2 breaks of serve in that 2nd set.

The top half of the draw is headed up by Djokovic and it does look like the weaker section. The main threats to the Serbian World Number 2 are likely to come from Tommy Robredo of Spain and Gael Monfils of France.

Monfils has to be ruled out for me as he was suffering from injury problems last week in South Africa and there is every chance he will not reach the Semi Final stage again this week.

Tommy Robredo has not had the best of starts to the new season, and his 1st round defeat at the Australian Open was particularly disappointing. He has a tough couple of rounds to negotiate here and has a bad head to head record against Djokovic, his likely Quarter Final opponent.

The bottom half of the draw contains some dangerous floaters in Feliciano Lopez (our South African winner from last week) and Michael Berrer (Finalist in Zagreb last week) as well as seasoned veterans James Blake and Marcos Baghdatis who meet in the 1st round. Another danger man is the Swede Robin Soderling, seeded number 3 for this tournament.

Davydenko has a couple of match up concerns which makes me wish to leave him alone for this tournament and he starts against the previously mentioned Lopez who is 5-1 against the Russian before having to play either Baghdatis or Blake in round 2.

Robin Soderling has a tough 1st round assignment against Florent Serra, a player that has beaten the World Number 8 on an indoor hard court before. If he can come through that, he should be good enough to move through the tournament to the Semi Final without too many other concerns.

Prediction

I think Novak Djokovic should come through the top half of the draw without too many issues so I am going to tip him to take this title and cement his Number 2 World Ranking. He has a nice draw in front of him and should allow him to play into form before the Final next Sunday.

I am also going to have a small interest in James Blake as an each way option from the bottom half of the draw and will explain why:

He has a tough draw to begin with against Baghdatis but his game matches up well with the Cypriot who was also having issues with his serving shoulder in Australia. Blake then has strong match ups in the next rounds against potential tough opponents- he is 8-0 against Davydenko and 2-0 against Jurgen Melzer, his most likely opponents.

James Blake showed some of his old form in losing to Juan Martin Del Potro in Australia, but he pushed the World Number 5 all the way there. Blake is also strong on indoor hard courts and hopefully he can give us a run for our money here.

FIXED ODDS BETTING :

Novak Djokovic @ 3.0 (Bet365)

James Blake each way @ 25 (Bet365)