Wish I had seen this earlier to provide some insights on this match but have been real busy lately so I aplogize.
Michael Llodra is a pretty good player in his own right, but he is best known as a very strong doubles player as evidenced by his 3 grand slam titles in doubles events. As a singles player, the veteran Frenchman has not enjoyed the same level of success. In the opening round of Hamburg, I was very surprised that the southpaw Llodra was able to get by Canas in straight sets no less...that was something of a huge upset and that may have influenced the decision to bet on him in this spot. Llodara is more of a grass and hard court player as the clay is generally considered his weakest surface. He has a big serve and likes to play up close to the net but that is more because he does not possess the all court game that many of the top tier players have and need to advance deep into these tournaments. He features a very strong and poweful slice backhand and moves pretty decent for his size, but the top spin on his groundstrokes is average at best and is not satisfactory against many of the better baseline players such as Verdasco.
As for the Verdasco/Llodra match, well it's late so it's not really fair to comment but Verdasco is much too aggressive for him espeically on the return and has the much better defense. A little surprised it was that big of a slaughter but every now and then Llodra is capable of pulling off an upset like he did against Cansas which to me was the upset of the tournament so far.
Good luck the rest of the way PMike.....
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