Andy Schooler picks out his best bets for the third round of the Mutua Madrid Open.
Tennis betting tips: Madrid Open round three
1pt Vit Kopriva to beat Arthur Rinderknech at 5/4 (BetMGM)
1pt tie-break in Alejandro Davidovich Fokina v Casper Ruud at 13/10 (BetMGM, VirginBet)
Vit Kopriva v Arthur Rinderknech
Kopriva delivered this column a winner in the first round of this tournament when his more consistent play proved more than enough to defeat an erratic Zhizhen Zhang.
The Chinese had the greater power that day, and a supposedly bigger serve, and we’ve got something similar on our hands here.
Rinderknech’s strong serve has already won him 88% of his service games on clay so far this season, albeit that’s a pretty small sample size – this isn’t his surface and he very much avoided the South American clay swing.
Kopriva is the man much more at home on the red dirt and he was picking up wins aplenty in South America in February, including reaching the last four in Rio.
He’s continued his strong form since returning to Europe, making the quarter-finals in Munich last week, an event which proved good preparation for Madrid given that it also take place at a notable altitude.
Kopriva’s hold-break percentages at tour level on clay this year are 80-30, giving him an impressive overall total of 110 – one more than his opponent here.
Rinderkench will look to use his serve to deny Kopriva a foothold and he was unbroken in his opening match against Dusan Lajovic.
However, this is a night match which will mean slightly slower conditions than in the heat of the day and that should work in Kopriva’s favour.
The Czech has also been serving well and he’s faced only two break points so far in Madrid, saving both, and I believe he’s a good price here to back up his victory over Andrey Rublev by claiming another seeded scalp.
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina v Casper Ruud
For those who like to follow trends, this one looks interesting.
These two have played on six previous occasions, each winning three times, but a noteworthy feature of their head-to-head record is the number of tie-breaks they’ve produced.
Now, admittedly, one of their meetings was at the Next Gen ATP Finals, which is played using the Fast 4 format (shorter sets). If you include that, they’ve contested nine tie-breaks in six matches; eliminate it and it’s six in five.
Both started this event with strong serving displays, Ruud catching the eye with his demolition of Jaume Munar, during which he went unbroken.
The main thing for Davidovich Fokina to do against Pablo Carreno Busta was to prove his fitness – that was his first match of the European clay season – but he passed that particular test with flying colours.
The Spaniard lost serve just the once and should be all the better for having come through that match comfortably, winning 6-3 6-3.
With Davidovich Fokina more than capable of living with the top guys on this surface, I’m expecting another tight contest, one which could easily produce another tie-break.
One in the match is a 13/10 shot, although I wouldn’t put anyone off the 3/1 about a first-set breaker given five of those six aforementioned matches have seen that bet win.
Posted at 05:45 BST on 26/04/26
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