Bjorn Phau has a career victory against Federer.
Roger Federer has drawn Bjorn Phau in the second round of the ATP Estoril event. Phau, some may be surprised to learn, actually has a career victory over Federer however that was from a match way back in the previous millenium as Phau beat Federer in straight sets back in Washington 1999.
At that time Phau had a bit more promise but as it has played out the German has never been ranked in the top 50 and his current ranking of 138th means that he can’t be expected to take a set off of Fed in their match.
As is usually the case when a top player goes head to head against a 100+ ranked player, the betting options are limited. Federer has come in priced at -2500 (1/25) and to be perfectly honest when I first saw the match-up I thought Federer would be coming in at -5000 (1/5). Phau’s best price is with bet365 where he is set at +1100 but there’s no way that you can bet that price as Phau is more like a 50 to 1 longshot.
When you look at Phau’s recent tournaments there is absolutely NOTHING to suggest that he can beat the top ranked player on tour. Phau has not been successful on tour this year nor has he had successful career (0 titles, he’s 30) and he’s probably only about 6 months away from being ranked outside of the top 200.
Phau has lost to all of these players this season, none of which have names that are too familiar (all rankings provided were from the time of match):
Henri Kontinen, ranked 262nd
Stephane Bohlu, ranked 143rd
Kevin Anderson, ranked 127th
Lukas Rosol, ranked 156th
Ricardas Berankis, ranked 255th
If Federer were to lose a set it would be entirely discrediting to the world number 1. The only way it could happen is if he decided to toy around with Phau and then got unlucky.
Federer is priced at -550 to win in precisely straight sets with Boylesports and that’s the only firmly recommendable value on this match. Otherwise you will need to work with the handicap with Paddy Power and our recommendation would be Federer at -6.5 (-110).
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