Unlucky with the Canas bet, Wittmann. Looked like Melzer was sticking with him reasonably well in the first set before getting broken towards the end, and then Canas just got away from him in the 2nd set.
Tursunov and Bracciali won for me, although Tursunov made real hard work of it. Delic is yet to play. Went for a short odds accumulator too just for a bit of added interest through the day, and as usual, there's always one that lets you down - in my case it was Murray
. Ferrero v Hrbaty was like a women's game today - deciding set, Ferrero was 5-2 up with 6 of the 7 games going against serve. Hrbaty broke, held and had break points to level it at 5-5 before Ferrero finally got his arse into gear and won a service game, so he's safely into the 2nd round.
Anyway, onto tomorrow. 4 that have caught my eye. Ladies first:
Santangelo to beat Dementieva. Santangelo in decent form, and had an excellent win against Petrova in Warsaw last week. Dementieva just back from quite a lengthy injury lay off, this is only her 2nd tournament since February 18th. Hopefully Santangelo can give her a decent game here.
Vinci to beat Schnyder. Schnyder not a player that's ever really impressed me, and seems to be sliding even further this season. Vinci has already won one tournament on clay this season, a Tier III event in Bogota.
And in the men's tournament in Rome:
Bolelli to beat Massu. Bolelli having an excellent season and, going by stats, seems to be a good clay court player (32-12 for the past year on clay). Won his latest tournament in Tunis on clay, and in the Barcelona tournament before that, knocked out Safin in the first round. Massu not in the greatest of form, and not sure he should be such a clear favourite here.
Llodra to beat O Rochus. Olivier Rochus not having a good time on clay recently, 3-7 for the past 12 months. Llodra not much better, 8-5, but he's available at around 2.9, looks quite a big price to me. H2H 4-1 in favour of Rochus, but they've never met on clay.
Bolelli @ 2.5 (Sporting Odds) 2pts
Lay Schnyder @ 1.24 (Betfair) liability 1.5pts
And as
Betfair for some reason are taking ages to credit my winnings on Bolelli, I've not got the funds just yet to place the other 2 bets (well at least not at
Betfair, and their odds seem better there than at Sporting Odds), so the Llodra and Dementieva bets will have to wait until tomorrow.