Cincinnati 2nd Round

Well I'm one down and two to go after the first round was completed in Cincy last night, as Janko Tipsarevic's injury problems continued.

The Serb, who hobbled out of Wimbledon at the hands of Rainer Schuettler last month, struggled with an ankle problem in succumbing to Carlos Moya in straight sets and it looks like he could have long term issues with his fitness to deal with.

It was only a minimum bet though and my other two march on - Gasquet prevailed against Michael Llodra after the French lefty quit with an arm injury in the third set of their first round clash.

The number 11 seed can consider himself fortunate, as he was having one of those Gasquet days and he will need to improve to take out Dmirty Tursunov later tonight.

David Ferrer is also through to face an unexpected second round opponent in Nicolas Lapentti, after the veteran from Ecuador took out in-form Marin Cilic in straight sets.

There appears - on paper at least - little to stand in the way of Ferrer and a semi-final clash with presumably Rafa Nadal now and I'm quite surprised that the Valencian is still available at around the 130 mark.

My only advice from yesterday was Gilles Simon to take out Nicolas Kiefer, but the Frenchman ended up with a somewhat easier task after the German pulled out, so no profit to report from that wager.

There are some tasty looking encounters in the second round today though and I like the look of Simon again, to take out an out of form James Blake at the nice price of 2.70.

The contrast in form between these pair is stark and although Blake likes it here in Cincy, his form in the straight sets thrashing by Kiefer in Toronto was abysmal and Simon's match yesterday will have handed him some valuable court time in these testing humid conditions.

Elsewhere, a treble of Ferrer [1.19], Berdych [1.35] and Gulbis [1.33] should prove profitable.