Pouille – Copil

Lucas Pouille and Marius Copil will square off in one of the least anticipated Wimbledon first round matches, but one that might hold some interesting betting potential.

Pouille is definitely not a grass court player and his 3-10 lifetime record on the surface (including 0-2 this season) speaks volumes. However, on the bright side, Pouille is having a breakout season this year, he has been marvelous on both hard and clay, climbing 50 places in the Atp Rankings and breaking To 30 for the first time in his career. He even showed improvements on grass, despite losing all matches. He took a set from Nishikori in Halle, he wasn`t awful.

Copil, ranked 174th in the world, is a talented Romanian with a big serve, but due to various reasons he wasn`t able to even break Top 100 so far and he`s already 25 years old. However, Copil is capable of beating good players and is usually having 2-3 solid tornaments each year. Grass is suiting his big serve perfectly and he was able to capitalize on that in the past few weeks. Copil played the final at Surbiton challenger, lost in the first round at Ilkley challenger and won all three matches in the Wimbledon qualies in straight sets (beat De Schepper, Wu and Fabbiano). He`s 9-2 on grass this season, both losses coming at the hands of Yen Hsun Lu.

Place your bet on Pouille vs. Copil and get top Wimbledon odds at Unibet.com now!

Head 2 Head is 0-0, the two players never met before on tour. Marius Copil has an important advantage because of the playing surface and it will be interesting to see how Pouille copes with his big serve.

I don`t think Copil deserves to be the favorite here. He has a few advantages – his form on grass, his skill on grass and his potential to beat the top guys. But will that be enough?

Except for these last few weeks, Pouille has been in another league than Copil. He is a much better player and has been beating excellent players all year, while Copil struggled to have an impact on challengers and had a below average season, even for a guy barely ranked in the Top 200.

While Copil can mix it out with the top guys from time to time, he`s also massively inconsistent. His current good form does not mean much, as he can always have a bad day at the office and when that happens (more often than not), he`s due to lose against pretty much anybody.

I will go with the better player here. Pouille is young, he`s learning how to play on grass, has a few good matches under his belt in which he was competitive. The grass courts here at Wimbledon are also generally slower than the challengers in which Copil played, or even the qualifiers (which are not played a Wimbledon). Today`s slower grass has really slimmed the difference between grass courters and clay courters. I fully expect Pouille to make much less errors than Copil and that should settle this match.

My tip is Pouille to win, I`m thinking 4 sets. Copil can win this if he plays his best, but I don`t believe he`s the favorite, so I`m comfortable staking reasonably high stakes on this bet. Prediction: Lucas Pouille – Marius Copil 6-4 6-7 7-6 7-5.

Pick: Pouille
Odds: 2.40 @ Unibet
Stake: 7
Possible profit: 9.80
Event date: 28 June