Men's French Open Betting: Four sets likely as Murray takes on Verdasco in Paris

Can this man put an end to Murray's French Open campaign?

Andy Murray and Fernando Verdasco meet for the 12th time on Monday at the French Open, where Sean Calvert looks to extend his winning streak on Murray matches to seven...

Both of my bets on Sunday returned a nice profit thanks to Ernests Gulbis, but it was agonisingly close again to a bumper payout.

At *5-3 ahead in the set one tie break my 7.5n/a Cash Out tip of Gulbis 7-6 was looking very good and was matched at 1.071/14 at that point, but the Latvian dumped a regulation forehand into the net.

A moment of brilliance from Roger Federer later and the chance had gone, but Cash Out options were plentiful there ahead of and during the tie break.

And it was made a little galling in the next set when Gulbis was again 5-3 up in the second set tie break and this time he held on to more or less seal my other bet of over 38.5 total games in the match, which ended up as a Gulbis win in five.

Elsewhere, Andy Murray came back to complete a win over Philipp Kohlschreiber and the Brit now takes on Fernando Verdasco, as I bid to call a Murray match correctly for the seventh straight time.

The issue this time is Murray's fitness after the Brit cramped badly during the four-hour, two-day Kohlschreiber match and the clear physical advantage should lie with Verdasco after the Spaniard eased past another injured opponent in Richard Gasquet.

Going back to the start of the tournament and Murray's request to the event to give him the latest possible start time - which they did - suggests that all is not well somewhere in the Murray body and with Nadal looming in his half of the draw and grass around the corner I wouldn't blame him for being a little sensible if he isn't fit.

The career head-to-head favours Murray, with a 9-2 record over Verdasco, but this will be their first meeting on clay and their first since the man from Madrid became the only man to take Andy to five sets at Wimbledon last year.

Here, Verdasco was pretty average against Michael Llodra and had to come from two sets down against Pablo Cuevas, while his win over Gasquet is tainted by the Frenchman's injury problems.

To win, Nando will have to have a very good day on his forehand, which will mainly be up against Murray's excellent double-hander and generally lefties struggle to break it down.

Only one other lefty than Nadal has ever beaten Murray on clay at tour level and that was Thomaz Bellucci in Madrid back in 2011, but on the flip side Andy has never beaten a top-30 ranked southpaw on clay.

In short, he hasn't played many lefties on clay and this one is very tough to call, with slight preference for Murray, but his fitness makes me think twice. A better bet here looks to be to back four sets in the 'number of sets' market, which covers the 3-1 each way, which seems the likely score.

I can't see it being done in three, while the overs looks dicey with a likely score of something like 1-6, 7-6, 6-2, 6-1 highly possible with these two.

The early match today looks like it should be comfortable for David Ferrer against Kevin Anderson, but he'll need to improve on a pretty poor showing in a win over Andreas Seppi in round three that I watched and the Spaniard was full of errors.

I expect he'll kick on from that and the big South African is unlikely to pose much of threat in these slow conditions and the under 34.5 total games looks decent there.

Recommended Bet
Back four sets in Verdasco/Murray at 2.56/4