ATP Geneva Tips, Analysis & Preview | Our Picks For This Week’s Tennis

Casper Ruud comes into this tournament as the champion in 2021 and 2022. Can the Norwegian complete the hat-trick of titles in Geneva?

It would also be a fair question to ask, does Ruud want to win this tournament? Tournaments don’t always remain in the same place in the tennis calendar for various reasons, Geneva is now in the week directly before the French Open main draw begins. When Ruud w0n here in 2021 it was in the week before this one, although he went on to defend successfully in 2022. This did Ruud no harm at all as he went on to reach his maiden Grand Slam final at Roland-Garros.

Ruud is not the only show in town though. Alexander Zverev won here in 2019, that was his only visit to Geneva until this week. Taylor Fritz could appreciate the specific conditions here, Grigor Dimitrov has been good here before as well.

The location near the border of the French border, in the foothills of the Alps, is around 315m above sea level. This is half of the altitude of Madrid, but still does have a slight bearing on the conditions here. Looking at the champions list here, to see Thomaz Bellucci, Stan Wawrinka (twice), and Marton Fucsovics, it appears to certainly help if you have a chunky serve and forehand combo here.

ATP Geneva Betting Tips

Taylor Fritz 1pt 4/1 @ Bet365

Marco Cecchinato 0.5pt 16/1 @ Bet365

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Event In Focus: ATP Geneva

This is an ATP250 event where we can often see many of the lower lights on the tour get the chance to win a good tournament in the week before a major tournament. One always has to consider the balance in these pre-Grand Slam weeks about how deep some of the bigger names will want to go, given what is at stake next week.

Ranking Analysis

Casper Ruud has maintained a top 4 ranking since the beginning of the year, obviously this ranking is underpinned by his French Open, US Open and World Tour Finals runner-up finishes last season. It is coming up to the time that he needs to defend those points. He is still ranked highly for clay specific results as well.

This field is characterised by players who aren’t successful or natural clay courters. Players like Adrian Mannarino, JJ Wolf, Alexander Bublik and Contant Lestienne have really poor clay ELO ratings. Ben Shelton and Yibing Wu are yet to have any statement wins on the surface in their young careers either.

Hugo Dellien, Filip Krajinovic, and, Nicolas Jarry, all have the opposite issue of being more clay specialised than their ATP ranking suggests.

2023 ATP Tour Form

These figures don’t include the opening United Cup, but do give us a pretty good picture of how players have started the season.

None of the players get over the ‘elite’ threshhold of 110. It is Taylor Fritz who gets the closest, with a service-hold inspired 107.7, only Nicolas Jarry has a better hold of serve ratio than the American.

It is fair to say that any player in this field who is scoring over 100 in the games won metric so far this season can be considered to be in pretty good form for this tournament. Constant Lestienne and Filip Krajinovic are below 90, both having very difficult seasons so far.

Career Clay Court Analysis

Only Ruud can be considered a top class clay court exponent according to career figures. However, a couple of other players are worth mentioning positively.

Alexander Zverev has a superb 70% win percentage in his career. Bernabe Zapata Miralles is much better on clay than other surfaces, his return game win percentage on clay is much higher than anyone else’s in the field.

The clay court swing can’t end soon enough for the likes of Mannarino, Bublik, and Lestienne. Yibing Wu’s early exploration of clay court conditions have not begun with much confidence.

Form & Rome Record

No-one comes in here totally flying. 7 out of 10 wins is the best anyone has managed, with many players managing to put up this performance. Tallon Griekspoor and Marc-Andrea Huesler are two previously unmentioned players who must be concerned about their form, especially as usually their clay performances are fairly solid.

There isn’t a great deal of course form on show here. As tends to be the case on tour, the 250 events aren’t always attended year-on-year unless players have particular affiliation to the venue.

Other than Ruud’s obvious liking for the place, other performances to highlight are Grigor Dimitrov’s quarter-final run, Ilya Ivashka will make it three years in a row here too, and Nicolas Jarry reached the final here in 2019.

ATP Geneva Draw

Geneva has an 8-seed, 28-man draw. The top 4 seeds will be given a bye into the second round.

ATP Geneva Betting Tips

Taylor Fritz 1pt 4/1 @ Bet365

The American finds himself in a very soft part of the draw and we have seen how his 2023 data is one of the best in the field. Also, there has been definite improvement in his clay court form and there is nothing in his half of the draw, until perhaps a potential semi-final meeting with Zapata Miralles, that should trouble him.

Once that deep in the tournament, Fritz may as well go on to win it. The fatigue factor is a concern, if Fritz embroils himself in 3hr 3-setters early in the tournament then there is a chance he calls it a day. This is something to watch out for this week.

Marco Cecchinato 0.5pt 16/1 @ Bet365

There were two players I picked out pre-draw that I wanted to side with, Cecchinato and Ben Shelton. As the fates would have it, they were drawn to face each other in the first match of the main draw. Cecchinato won through in three sets, so is the one who gets backed as a supplementary bet.

The Italian is a clay court specialist, as his 2018 run to the Roland Garros semi-finals will demonstrate. Indeed, he’s never won a main draw Grand Slam match at any other venue than Paris. He is enjoying a decent time of it in 2023 as well so is in a good position for a potentially deep run here.

He also fits into the category of player for whom ultimate Grand Slam success is very unlikely, but he could genuinely win this tournament.