Men's French Open Betting: Back Berlocq to continue Isner's Roland Garros misery

Sean reckons Berlocq has today's match on his racquet

Rafa Nadal makes his entrance to the 2013 French Open today on day two of this year's tournament and Sean Calvert is backing a seed to fall on Monday in Paris...

Sunday was not the start to the week that I was hoping for at Roland Garros as Lukas Lacko allowed Sam Querrey to walk away with a straight sets victory on day one of the 2013 French Open.

Querrey's first ever 3-0 win in the tournament was achieved after a less than spirited effort from the unreliable Lacko which saw the American ease through without much of a challenge.

Monday's schedule at Roland Garros features defending champion Rafa Nadal, plus Tomas Berdych, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet on the show courts and John Isner, Nicolas Almagro and Jerzy Janowicz among other on the outside courts.

And I don't rate the chances of John Isner very highly today over five sets on clay against Carlos Berlocq when their match plays out at around 4pm UK time today.

Isner is awful on European clay and pretty poor generally away from the United States and 1.875/6 seems very reasonable about Berlocq to put the big man out of his misery today.

Isner has won four of his last 13 matches on European clay and defeats to Denis Istomin, Robin Haase and Pablo Andujar coming into this is hardly the kind of form that you need coming into a major - and it's a major that the American is yet to do anything in too.

The big man has never beaten anyone of the class or ranking of Berlocq at Roland Garros, where he's won just three matches since his debut in 2008 and in slow, cool conditions in Paris I can't see Berlocq not coming out on top today.

Nadal should have a much easier time of it when his match with hit-and-miss German Daniel Brands kicks off at around 11.45am UK time.

Brands can be very good on his day and his supporters will be hoping that he has a better day than in Dusseldorf last week when he was woeful in winning a single game in a crushing defeat from the very average Jan Hajek on home soil.

The big German has a big game, but Nadal will push him into areas of the court that he doesn't want to be in and unless Brands serves extremely well this should be a routine win for the Spaniard.

Brands has taken a set from both of the top-10 players he's faced on clay though and in one of those he pushed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to five sets in their match here in 2010, so if he brings his best game to the court he could well take this one over the 26.5 total games mark at around 2.0621/20.

Recommended Bet
Back Berlocq to beat Isner at 1.875/6