Too bad..

The idea was to lay Hurkacz, who's been playing really well for a few tournaments now, but I'm not sure this is the right time/opponent to do it..

Super disappointing against Damm and then shaky against Bublik to finish, Hurkacz was a real letdown when he’d been so impressive for his comeback at the start of the year. Maybe already a bit of a backlash after so much time away from the courts? It’s his quality on serve that I didn’t like in the last matches, he seemed a bit out of it. Not the kind of big Hubi you’d want to back hard at all, quite the opposite! The problem is that at Indian Wells he’s got good history, the slow courts are nice for him because outside of the serve he’s still a bit of a grinder. The other problem is that his opponent Kovacevic doesn’t really look like our guy to go and lay uncle Hubi.

Yeah, Kovacevic kind of lost his way too after starting strong himself! A semi in Brisbane and then a few wins but without the same edge, he’s not at his best. I tone down the severity of his losses a bit because he’s running into guys in good form and every time the matches are tight anyway. He’s super solid on serve and will probably be playing tiebreaks in almost every match, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him push Hubi in one or two sets but crack yet again in the key moments. The slow surface, on the other hand, isn’t great for him; we need to wait for confirmation through qualies but if it’s faster than expected I think the most logical bet would be a games over if the line/odds are interesting. I’d been pretty put off by Kova but I’m thinking that in the end he’s doing his matches and Hurkacz is coming in out of form, so maybe it does deserve a bet.