Daily match picks

I thought the season ended last week but I noticed that the ITF in Dubai had an impressive list of players. I decided to product trading tips emails for the tournament. I haven’t included this week in the paid for emails that people have subscribed to and to post the tips on the blog to let potential new subscribers use the advice. It has been a decent tournament so far. On Monday there were only 2 matches as they had quite a few qualifying matches to complete. The first match started at 9am. On Monday afternoon I checked to see how many matches were taking place on Tuesday. There were 14. That’s fine. No issues there. However the first matches started at 6:30 am! So I could either get up at 5 am or write up some matches the nigh before. I decided on the latter.

On Tuesday Sue started with CoronaVirus symptoms. The list of possible symptoms is a long one and she had almost ALL of them. She called her manager at the hospital who booked her in for a swab test on Wednesday morning. When anything goes wrong Sue usually reacts based on worst case scenario. She was very upset that she wouldn’t be able to see the grandkids at Christmas. She was also pretty scared. By lunchtime I convinced her to go to bed to rest. By the time she got upstairs her cough had got worse and she was really struggling to breathe. She was panicking. I told her if that continued I was going to have to call an ambulance. She really didn’t want that and started to calm down a little.

I went downstairs and noticed that she had the heating cranked up and had also closed all the windows. We never have all the windows closed. It was like an oven down there. She also had the actual oven on for the evening meal! I turned the heating down and went upstairs to the bedroom. I suggested that her cough was due to the lack of fresh air so opened the window a little. Her cough stopped within a few minutes.

On Wednesday morning she felt a little better. Her cough had gone but she still ached all over, had a headache and a bad sore throat. We went down to the “Pod” at the hospital. A drive through testing place. She was given the swab test which was pretty brutal. I thought she was going to punch the nurse! Her nose was still sore later that evening. Now we have to wait for the result. This morning (Thursday) she feels a lot better so that’s the first worry out of the way. If is DOES turn out to be Covid at least it doesn’t look like being life threatening. Personally I think it is more likely to be a chest infection or a different virus but you never know. She does work on a Covid ward after all.

I’ll be spending the rest of the week updating the player info on the members page. It is my least favourite job of the year. Then I have a few match recordings to go through and commentaries to add. That will easily fill the few weeks I have until the new season starts!

Not much else going on. Almost all my Christmas shopping is done, wrapped and under the tree. We did think we would do most of the food shopping online with Tesco. We don’t live far from Tesco so we don’t usually use the online shopping service. We checked for a delivery slot on the 23rd. This was at the start of December. There wasn’t a single slot for the whole of December! I thought they had increased capacity since the early days of the first lockdown. We also tried Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s. It was the same story everywhere. So I guess we will be in Tesco at 6 am on the 23rd!

Stay safe.

 

The Final

Medvedev (1.78) v Thiem (2.26)

Due to start at 6 pm

Thiem leads their previous matches 3-1. Their last match was at the US Open in August. Thiem won on a hard court in straight sets. Medvedev won on a hard court in Canada in August 2019. He won in 2 sets.

Both players have very strong overall results. Thiem has a slight lead. Their indoor results are very close. Slight edge to Medvedev.

Medvedev Struggled a little for form when the tour resumed in August. He got his act together at the Paris Masters earlier this month and won the title. In this tournament he has been in superb form. He dropped his first set of the tournament last night to Rafa Nadal. Nadal served for the match at 5-4 in the second set but Medvedev broke him to 0. He took the set in a tie break and took their deciding set with a double break of serve.

Thiem also needed 3 sets in the semi final. He was 0-4 down in the third set tie break but fought back. Thiem served extremely well in the semi final. He faced just 3 break points and was not broken. Djokovic only faced 2 break points in that match and was broken once. He had not looked motivated in his last round robin match. He didn’t need to win that match as had already qualified for the semi finals. I thought that tanking that match may affect his momentum and therefore his form in the Djokovic match but that was not the case.

Stats for the tournament favour Medvedev. His return stats are significantly better. He has been broken 4 times in the tournament. Three of them came in the semi final. This is going to be another tight one. If both players continue to serve well it could be settled in 3 tie breaks. I am going with Medvedev to take it in 3 sets. Back him around 2.20 to 2.30. Lay the winner of the first set.