ATP Monte-Carlo Tips & Analysis | Our Picks For This Week’s Tennis

The first in a number of ATP1000 tournaments on the red clay of Europe is always the Monte-Carlo Masters.

The Monte-Carlo Masters is also one of the oldest tournaments in the world. The original edition of the tournament was won by Reginald Doherty in 1897. The Englishman won the tournament six times with his younger brother Laurence winning the other four in the first decade of the tournament. Something tells me that the strength in depth of the tour wasn’t quite as strong as it is now.

Like most European clay court tournaments of a certain level this competition has been dominated by Rafael Nadal. The great Spaniard has won it 11 times with only Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka, and last year’s champion Stefanos Tsitsipas able to get their names on the trophy.

Djokovic is here in Monte-Carlo ready to play his first tournament since Dubai, and only his second since winning the Australian Open. Defending champion Tsitsipas played in Indian Wells and Miami but was clearly unfit to do so and has to prove his fitness over the next few weeks. The tour’s big winner over the last few weeks has been Daniil Medvedev, is this the season that he is able to conquer clay?

ATP Monte-Carlo Betting Tips

Casper Ruud 1pt EW @ 11/1 with Bet365

The Norwegian exploded onto the tour originally as a clay court specialist and, of course, was the Roland-Garros finalist last year. He has improved a lot on hard courts in the last few years but clay really is his bread and butter.

Ruud was having a poor 2023 until last week when he played himself into form by winning the Estoril tournament. Ruud has shown the tendency to be able to back up tournament wins, he won three in a row in 2021, so that is a positive for him rather than a concern. He is in the opposite side of the draw to Novak Djokovic,

Frances Tiafoe 0.25pt EW @ 200/1 with Bet365

There are obvious pitfalls with this bet. Tiafoe was still playing in Houston at 2am UK time and he has a 13.5 hour flight to Monte-Carlo to then start playing the following day. Clearly that is not ideal preparation.

However, he did win that tournament. He is showing a lot more consistency on tour at the moment and that win nudges the American close to the top ten. The price he has been quoted at here seems to have more than compensated for his disrupted preparation. He may end up going out first round but his price is worth a speculative bet.

ATP Monte-Carlo Draw

The draw in Monte-Carlo is a 56-player draw, with 16 seeds. The top eight seeds have received byes into the second round.