The Cincinnati Open gets under way on Thursday and Andy Schooler has picked out his best bets from the first-round matches of the ATP Masters 1000 event.
Tennis betting tips: Cincinnati Open
1.5pts Arthur Rinderknech to beat Nuno Borges at 7/4 (General)
1pt Roberto Carballes Baena to beat Hugo Gaston at 17/20 (Unibet, BetMGM)
Arthur Rinderknech v Nuno Borges (Thu, 1600 BST)
My best bet for the first-round matches in Cincinnati comes in one of the opening contests.
Put simply, Rinderknech looks too big here.
While this will be his debut in Cincinnati – a beneficiary of the tournament’s expansion from a 56 draw to 96 – he should be suited to what are expected to be slick conditions despite the change of court surface to Har-Tru, the same layout used in both Toronto and Washington recently.
He played well on the faster grass, reaching the quarter-finals at Queen’s Club, where he beat Ben Shelton, and then upsetting Alex Zverev at Wimbledon.
Having moved back onto the clay, Rinderknech made the most of altitude conditions in Kitzbuhel – where the balls fly through the air that bit quicker – and made the last four.
A strong first serve should produce aces and unreturnables here and I think this will be a tougher match to win for Borges than their previous meeting in slower Indian Wells back in March. The Portuguese won that in three sets.
Borges is just 5-6 since the start of the grasscourt season and has found conditions tricky here in the past. He’s won just the one main-draw match in Cincinnati and that was against a player who came into the contest having lost 15 of his last 16, namely Adrian Mannarino.
Rinderknech is definitely worth backing at 7/4.
Roberto Carballes Baena v Hugo Gaston (Thu, 1600 BST)
Carballes Baena rewarded his backers – including this column – last week in Toronto when he saw off an ailing Camilo Ugo Carabelli.
This week in the first round, he faces a player who has struggled for much of 2025.
Gaston is 15-23 for the season so far with 10 of his last 14 matches lost – and one of those wins came via retirement.
Five of those 10 recent defeats came against players from outside the top 100.
After beating Ugo Carabelli, Carballes Baena was competitive against eventual semi-finalist Taylor Fritz last week, only losing 7-5 7-6 and showing again that he’s able to deal with faster conditions.
As pointed out last week, this is a player who made the third round of this season’s Australian Open and the quarter-finals in Auckland. He’s also well known for his ability at altitude where the ball has that extra fizz.
Carbaelles Baena should arguably be shorter here and I’m happy to back him at 17/20.
Posted at 1010 BST on 07/08/25
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