Robredo has the qualities to take care of battling Brit

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It has been one-way traffic for Dan Evans and Viktorija Golubic to open their Roland Garros campaigns with wins, but plunges don’t always pay off and it could be worth backing their opponents.

Evans is a superb battler on fast courts, especially hard ones, but the Birmingham bulldog is no great shakes on clay.

He ventures into the red-court realm of Tommy Robredo, one of the finest exponents of clay-court tennis this century and while plenty of punters reckon Evans can silence the veteran Spaniard, the Catalan may have other ideas.

Robredo would have won far more slow-court titles had it not been for the presence of Rafael Nadal and, to an extent, Juan Carlos Ferrero, but he still knows his way around on clay better than many of the younger generation.

Evans has suffered first-round losses to Kyle Edmund, Robin Haase and Jiri Vesely. He posted a respectable effort in Barcelona, where he ousted Thiago Monteiro and Mischa Zverev before finding Dominic Thiem too good, but even then Evans didn’t exactly coast up in his wins.

Robredo, like Evans a solid hard-court performer, beat the Briton in four sets in the 2013 US Open. His recent clay form has not been special, but he has shown enough in defeats to Pablo Carreno Busta and Nicolas Almagro to suggest he could hold sway in his Paris opener.

Golubic has been well supported to eliminate Aliak­sandra Sasnovich, but the Belarusian has a much more positive outlook than the Swiss player and that could be worth taking into account.

Golubic was an easy winner of their only previous clay outing in Palermo in 2013. But Sasnovich, a talented performer with a bright future, is more mature these days and could extend her lead in their personal series to 3-1.

Recommendations
T Robredo
1pt 7-10 Betfair
A Sasnovich
1pt 4-5 general