The 2012 ATP Bangkok final (Thailand Open) will be played on Sunday with two French players competing for the title in the 250 level event. Richard Gasquet, the two seed in the tournament, will face Gilles Simon, the tournament's four seed. Gasquet is in the final after defeating Jarkko Nieminen of Finland while Simon upended top seeded Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia in the semifinals.
The sportsbooks are not unanimous, as they usually are for sporting matches, when it comes to designating the favorite and the underdog in the Gasquet/Simon final. Stan James, for example, make Gasquet the favorite at 4/5 while bet365 have Simon as the favorite at the same odds. These two players do look evenly matched from several points of view: they are similarily aged, their career high rankings are similar (Gasquet is a former World No. 7, Simon a former World No. 6), and they have both taken down more than a handful of ATP titles in their careers (all player or head-to-head stats from ATPWorldTour.com).
But Gasquet enters the final in Bangkok knowing that he has defeated Simon in all of their previous tour level matches. Simon has a challenger level match-win against Gasquet from the 2010 season but the current World No. 14 is 5-0 against Simon in ATP or Grand Slam draws. Additionally, three of Gasquet's victories have come on a hardcourt surface and ATP Bangkok is a hardcourt event.
With the head-to-head history so lopsided, one has to wonder why any sportsbook would make Simon the favorite, even just a mild one, heading into the Thailand Open final. A big reason for that could be that Simon has been the more efficient player in Bangkok. He is into the final having not dropped a set, having not faced a tiebreaker, and having knocked out the tournament's favorite in Tipsarevic. Gasquet, on the other hand, dropped sets to both Grigor Dimitrov and Jarkko Nieminen while Australian Bernard Tomic took the World No. 14 to a tiebreaker in the quarters. Additionally Gasquet has just a 6-10 record in ATP finals while Simon has an impressive 10-2 record from the same perspective.
The ATP Bangkok final might be a case of 'don't try to analyze it, just enjoy it' because it is tough to see how either player could be considered a clear favorite. The longer termed trends are important and the 5-0 record in Gasquet's favor is difficult to ignore. But it's also hard to ignore the short term trends and how well Simon is playing in Bangkok having blazed through Gael Monfils and Tipsy with only 13 games lost.
The final from the Thailand Open is scheduled for Sunday with a starting time of 3pm (ICT). Gasquet doesn't quite look up to the task ahead of him following a close match against Nieminen, a player who is ranked just 38th in the world. The Frenchman will need to play better than he has been playing if he is going to improve to 6-0 against Simon, while the World No. 19 has to feel as though the Bangkok title is his for the taking.