Saturday is semi-finals day at the Rolex Paris Masters – can anyone prevent a Carlos Alcaraz v Ben Shelton final?
Tennis betting tips: Paris Masters SFs
1pt Ben Shelton to beat Luca van Assche 2-0 at 10/11 (William Hill)
Luca van Assche v Ben Shelton (1330 GMT)
We’ve had a few surprises in the Masters 1000 tournaments this season, most notably Alejandro Davidovich Fokina winning in Shanghai at a massive price.
Yet perhaps the biggest of them all is Van Assche being in the semi-finals here. He had won two matches in nine previous main-draw appearances at this level before this week – and lost in qualifying at another 11 such events. Twenty tries, never past round two.
Essentially, I never thought I’d see the day when the Frenchman was in the last four of a Masters event.
Lorenzo Musetti and Learner Tien have been among his victims but facing a qualifier in the quarter-finals shows it’s been a pretty soft draw for Van Assche.
Rinky Hijikata had plenty of chances in that match on Friday but converted just two of the seven break points he created. The Australian was up a break in the final set only to crumble when asked to serve to stay in it at 5-6.
World number four Shelton is a massive step up and seems unlikely to be so profligate or generous.
As I feared, the American took down Tommy Paul when an underdog on Friday, his compatriot only able to create a single break point in the match. Paul served well too but one bad game is all it takes on a slick surface like this when you are facing a serve as big as Shelton’s and that was the decisive factor in their final set.
Shelton should win plenty of cheap points again here via his serve and so this will be a completely different match to Friday’s for Van Assche.
His Hijikata clash featured plenty of long rallies and several deuce games. I can’t see that happening here and anticipate the underdog struggling to fashion break chances.
Van Assche’s best chance will likely be hanging in there in his own service games – Shelton’s return isn’t great – and maybe he can edge a tie-break or two.
However, he’s at 48% for the season on tie-breaks won and Shelton at 62%.
The American has the bigger, more reliable weapons here and I would not be surprised to see him win comfortably in what is the biggest match of Van Assche’s life.
10/11 about a straight-sets win seems fair.
Casper Ruud v Carlos Alcaraz (not before 1600 GMT)
Antepost title favourite Alcaraz remains at the head of the market as the players enter the semi-finals but he wouldn’t have been there in-play on Friday night.
The Spaniard was staring at a straight-sets defeat when down two consecutive match points against Taylor Fritz only to recover and win in three.
Failing to win either point cost Fritz his place in the ATP Finals – Rafael Jodar will debut instead – and a total of $500,000. He’ll get an early holiday now and I just hope he doesn’t spend a lot of it thinking about all that.
Alcaraz, meanwhile, moves onto a meeting with Ruud, a player he has beaten six times out of seven.
Looking at that list, the good news for Ruud is that he has won the only previous match played on an indoor hardcourt – it was also a slick one, coming at the those ATP Finals in Turin.
However, Alcaraz was clearly struggling that day due to illness. It would be foolish to read too much into it.
The fitness advantage this time around is likely to be with Alcaraz as Ruud appeared to be struggling during his quarter-final win over Nuno Borges, most notably with the strapping under his knees made famous by Rafael Nadal.
The physio was called at one stage but his opponent wasn’t able to take advantage. In what was a tight, serve-dominated affair, Borges failed to convert two break points midway through the second set and duly lost his own deal in the following game – the match effectively lost in a five-minute spell.
Ruud thus went unbroken for the third time in four matches in Paris – he’s lost serve only once in the whole tournament.
The Norwegian will need to serve at a high level here to stand a chance but the problem is Alcaraz has held a big advantage on return of serve across their previous matches – he’s won 41% of return points to Ruud’s 32%.
I stand by my assessment that conditions are faster than ideal here for Alcaraz but he’s also an adaptable sort and we can’t be sure that Ruud will even be able to play at his top level given the discomfort he looked in again, at times, against Borges.
If he is able to produce that level of serving again, maybe Ruud can keep this close. However, I suspect that like Van Assche in the first semi, his time is now up.
Alcaraz is 7/10 for a straight-sets win, although that’s probably short enough – Fritz kept him at bay for long periods and Ruud’s serve has the potential to do something similar.
The 2-0 SF double is worth considering but, with more doubts here, I’m going to leave this one alone.
Posted at 08:05 GMT on 07/11/26
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