The first ball of the new ATP Tour season should have been hit in Sydney. Instead, thanks to Covid-19, the opening action of 2021 will take place thousands of miles away in the Turkish resort of Antalya.
It’s probably not what punters want to hear, but this hastily-arranged event certainly has a factor of unpredictability about it.
For a start, this will be the first time the Limak Arcadia Sport Resort has been visited by the tour so there’s no ‘course form’. It’s basically a hotel complex and plenty of tourists will have played on these hardcourts. Rebound Ace is the specific surface.
The players contesting the tournament are arriving after a two-month break during which new tactics will have been introduced and fitness programmes toughed out in a bid to improve performance over the coming campaign.
It’s also a real mish-mash of a field. There are three top-20 players in attendance, led by world number 10 Matteo Berrettini, but the withdrawal of several stars, including Jannik Sinner and Borna Coric, has seen a number of spots in the 32-man field filled by players ranked outside the top 200.
With the vast majority of those ranked 100-200 heading instead to Australian Open qualifying, which starts on Sunday in Doha, the likes of world number 268 Andrea Arnaboldi have made the cut. And that’s before we start thinking about who comes through qualifying.
What that means in terms of a bet is that we can probably put a line through about a third of the field straight away.
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