Tennis acca tips: Dominic Thiem to earn revenge in Switzerland
- James Richardson
- 18 July 2023
Planet Sport presents nine leads for assembling your own tennis accumulator from matches slated to take place on Wednesday, July 19 in Bastad, Gstaad, Newport, Budapest and Palermo.
The professional tours have fractured after the great coming together of Wimbledon and the action is split across several venues this week.
Europe's summer clay swing is well underway once more while the grass season winds down in Newport for the ATP Tour.
Here we take a look at a handful of matches and pick the likely winners from Bastad, Gstaad, Newport, Budapest and Palermo.
ATP Bastad:
Luca Van Assche vs Francisco Cerundolo | Pick: Cerundolo
ATP Gstaad:
Dominic Thiem vs Hamad Medjedovic | Pick: Thiem
ATP Gstaad:
Roberto Bautista Agut vs Pedro Cachin | Pick: Bautista Agut
ATP Newport:
Jordan Thompson vs Liam Broady | Pick: Thompson
ATP Newport:
Rinky Hijikata vs Adrian Mannarino | Pick: Mannarino
WTA Budapest:
Diana Shnaider vs Maria Timofeeva | Pick: Shnaider
WTA Budapest:
Kaja Juvan vs Astra Sharma | Pick: Juvan
WTA Palermo:
Diane Parry vs Qinwen Zheng | Pick: Zheng
ATP Bastad: Luca Van Assche vs Francisco Cerundolo
Eastbourne titlist Francisco Cerundolo should have few problems switching quickly from grass to clay as he prepares to face Luca van Assche in Bastad.
Van Assche is enjoying a decent season for a young player but that the highlight of his term has been taking a set off Novak Djokovic suggests he still has some way to go to prove he can be a force on tour.
Cerundolo is part of a promising generation of Argentinean players that are emerging and is one to watch in the coming seasons.
These players have not met at ATP Tour level, but Cerundolo sports the superior ranking and record on clay.
ATP Gstaad: Dominic Thiem vs Hamad Medjedovic
Dominic Thiem should know all about Hamad Medjedovic after losing to the Serbian in the semi-finals of the Mauthausen Challenger event in his native Austria.
While Thiem has the better ranking, it is Medjedovic who has more match wins on clay this season, although a significant portion of those wins have come in qualifying events.
Thiem should find a way to get the better of his younger opponent on clay to get back the win.
While they have met at Challenger level, this will be their first match on the full ATP Tour.
ATP Gstaad: Roberto Bautista Agut vs Pedro Cachin
Roberto Bautista Agut is out to save his long streak of maintaining at least a fifty per cent win-loss ratio on clay from 2011 onwards.
Bautista Agut enjoyed a bye into the second round in Gstaad but will need to reach the final of the tournament to put himself back in black on clay this term.
The Spaniard has won just four of his ten matches on the surface in 2023 and has never faced Cachin.
Cachin snapped a three-match losing streak when he defeated Taro Daniel in the first round and should provide a stiff test, but Bautista Agut should have the game to put him away.
ATP Newport: Jordan Thompson vs Liam Broady
While Liam Broady is no stranger to grass as a British player, Aussie Jordan Thompson is an absolute ringer on the surface.
Thompson obliterated Aleksandar Kovacevic in the first round to claim his 11th win of the season on grass.
Broady also enjoyed a relatively painless passage into the last 16 and can draw on a previous win over Thompson, albeit at a much lower level.
Broady neat Thompson in an F8 event in Canada back in 2014, going on to win the title, but in the intervening years, Thompson has crunched it on grass.
ATP Newport: Rinky Hijikata vs Adrian Mannarino
Having enjoyed a by through the first round, Adrian Mannarino gets his Newport campaign underway against Rinky Hijikata.
Mannarino has the experience and power advantage, although Hijikata is arguably the better mover of the two players.
Unless Mannarino grossly misfires, then he should progress with relative ease, given his decent form so far this season.
Counting in Hijikata's favour is the momentum of being set to move up to a new career-high ranking after a first round win over Abedallah Shelbayh.
WTA Budapest: Diana Shnaider vs Maria Timofeeva
Maria Timofeeva also snapped a long losing streak in her opening match at the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.
She faces another less-fancied player in the second round, although it is Shnaider who has the superior ranking and record this season, and she upset top seed Bernarda Pera in the opening round.
Both players are Russian and 19 years old but Shnaider has the added edge of having played collegiate tennis in the United States.
This will be the first senior WTA Tour meeting between the compatriots, and we also have no record of any junior clashes in Russia.
WTA Budapest: Kaja Juvan vs Astra Sharma
Kaja Juvan should be far more familiar with clay courts than her Australian opponent Astra Sharma.
Juvan also beat Sharma when they met at the WTA 125 Croatia Bol Open in 2019.
Juvan secured a confidence-boosting first round win at Wimbledon after battling through the qualifying tournament.
Both players secured their place in the main draw in Budapest through the qualifiers so there is little to choose between them, but Juvan looks the solid choice.
WTA Palermo: Diane Parry vs Qinwen Zheng
Rising Chinese star Qinwen Zheng double-bagled her hapless first round opponent in Palermo to put everyone at the event on notice.
Parry had a fairly routine win first up but will face a different challenge from the robust Zheng.
Zheng is out to return to the top 20 and continue her meteoric rise in the game.
A win in her first meeting with fellow 20-year-old Parry would set her on the path to doing that.
