Altmaier hasn't won a single match on a hard court all year. Not one. He's spent the whole summer on clay, Bastad, Kitzbuhel, even a club tie on the red stuff, and now he walks onto a Montreal hard court stone cold. Vukic has been doing the exact opposite. Won Granby on this surface in July, then qualified in Washington and knocked over three of them before Musetti stopped him. Two-nil Vukic and I'm comfortable saying it. Give me Vukic.

Careful with that, though. Six matches is not a season. Altmaier is still a top-seventy player and one decent afternoon ends the whole story you've just told. And the market isn't asleep. Vukic is already the favourite here, so nobody's handing us a gift. We're arguing the gap is wider than the price says, which is a smaller claim than the one you just made. I'll take Vukic as well. I'm just not pretending it's free. He drops a set and we sweat it.

Two-nil Vukic for me, and the surface split is the whole thing. No hard-court wins at all this year for Altmaier, fifteen for Vukic, plus a title on the surface last month. So which price. There's a line asking Vukic to win by three games or more, and that wants a margin the read doesn't promise, so it pays worse the moment this gets tight. Just winning the match is the safer rung and it's the one I want. I make Vukic about a 66% shot and you're getting 1.67 at Pinnacle. That's the bet.

This is a player in his element against one who has been somewhere else entirely.

Two-one.