The Pick, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook: Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. Laslo Djere, Monte Carlo

On Thursday, we’ll be treated to a meeting between world No. 5 Stefanos Tsitsipas and world No. 62 Laslo Djere in the round of 16 at the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters. The 23-year-old is a massive favorite to advance to the quarterfinals of this event, but that might be a bit of a pricing mistake by the oddsmakers.

While Tsitsipas, who is -800 to win this match, should ultimately end up defeating Djere, it’s a little surprising to see the sportsbooks exposing themselves like this. These two players have met only twice in their careers, with one of those matches being a three-set win for Djere on clay. That match was all the way back in 2016, but these two also met on hard courts in February. Djere, who strongly prefers to play on the dirt, pushed Tsitsipas to two tiebreakers in that match. The first one saw the Greek star winning 9-7, so it really could have gone either way.

If Djere was able to push Tsitsipas to 26 games on the 23-year-old’s favorite surface, it doesn’t seem outlandish to think that the Serbian is capable of making this match competitive. Tsitsipas undoubtedly looked great in a 6-3, 6-0 win over Fabio Fognini in his opener, but there’s a little more fight in Djere than there is in the Italian. Djere, who has a career winning percentage of 62 percent in clay-court matches, is going to put a lot of extra balls in play in this match. That’s a bit of a difference between him and Fognini, who often slips up the most when he is trying to end points early.

One thing that has been clear in this tournament is that it’s hard to just walk onto clay and perform at a high level. We’ve had some successful results in the past week backing clay-court specialists against players that haven’t quite gotten their feet wet on the dirt this year. Well, this is going to be Djere’s eighth match on clay this season, while Tsitsipas’ meeting with Fognini was his first. Keep that in mind when you’re watching this one, as we could see Djere potentially making some noise in the opening set. If the Serbian can do enough damage there, the Over would be in play with a second set that is just a tad competitive.

The Pick: Over 20.5 Games (-110)