Roger's Masters?

Finally, the red dirt is no more and quite frankly I am as happy to see the back of it as Gordon Brown was to see the back of Tony Blair.

Hopefully this week we'll see some proper tennis - i.e. no fixed matches or contests dictated by the serves of giants. We have just the one tournament to concentrate on and it's the Rogers Cup on hard in Montreal, an ATP Masters Series event and one which has all of the world's top stars on display.

Considering the fact that all of 2007's Grand Slams and Masters Series events have been won by either Federer or Nadal, with the exception of one, and 18 of the last 20 Masters, it would be easy to assume that this one will result in a victory for the Swiss or the Majorcan. The other Masters event this year incidentally was won by world number three Djokovic, so it's fair to say that in the big tournaments, class tells.

Looking at the draw is never a great deal of use in Masters events, as there is quality everywhere in the field, so I have been concentrating on alternatives to the big two. My conclusion was to have a small bet of one point on Richard Gasquet, as I managed to bag 50-1 on Betfair, with a few half point bets being added to that in the event of someone matching a big price on any of Haas, Murray, Canas or Baghdatis. These are the big match players with the best chances, but I won't be getting involved unless I find three figure prices or thereabouts. Gasquet was runner up here last year and I'm hoping that his semi-final performance at Wimbledon will give him a boost to go well again here this year.

With so much depending on Federer's performance, it makes sense to keep stakes to a minimum and hope that Karlovic can catch the Swiss cold in his first round match with a barrage of aces and unreturnables, or perhaps Murray or Blake later on. This is all guesswork really, but the main profit opportunity this week will be the individual match bets and I like the look of Hyung-Taik Lee today to take out Stanislas Wawrinka at around 4-5.