Australian Open Men’s Day Three: Duckworth v Auger-Aliassime

As with Monday’s first spherical matches, most heavy favourites eased into spherical two on Tuesday with the likes of Andrey Rublev, Daniil Medvedev, Rafa Nadal, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alex De Minaur all progressing with out dropping a set. Roberto Bautista-Agut, nevertheless, did get overwhelmed at a brief value, with the Spaniard surprisingly dropping 3-1 to Radu Albot.

The winners from Monday take to the courts on Wednesday to play their spherical two clashes, so after a whole lot of intangibles prematurely of spherical one we a minimum of now know that each participant remaining within the competitors has gained a match.

Unfortunately, there’s not an abundance of worth on Wednesday’s schedule, with many of the worth in line with my mannequin specializing in heavy underdogs. One of those is available in one of many earlier matches within the morning in James Duckworth, who is 6.005/1 for his conflict in opposition to Felix Auger-Aliassime.

Home participant Duckworth acquired a simple win over Damir Dzumur in spherical one and did fairly effectively within the Murray River Open warm-up occasion final week, defeating Tomas Machac and Ugo Humbers as underdog earlier than a good loss to the bettering Corentin Moutet.

Before the tour paused in March, he gained a Challenger title on arduous court docket and in addition took one other two on the finish of November 2019, so he is one thing of a floor specialist.

My notion of Duckworth at present is that he is a fairly competent arduous courter and whereas he ought to clearly be underdog in opposition to Auger-Aliassime, the value is just too huge on him. Not solely this, however with a projected maintain proportion in extra of 80%, Duckworth ought to be capable of maintain serve with respectable regularity in what I anticipate to be a relatively serve-orientated match.

As the handicap market continues to get additional liquidity on the Exchange, I’m anticipating that Duckworth +6.5 video games will probably be accessible simply shy of 1.9010/11 in step with normal market traces, and this seems to be a affordable spot to me.

Another serve-orientated match is prone to be Reilly Opelka versus Taylor Fritz, with the big-serving Opelka additionally wanting marginal worth at 2.226/5 to get the win as effectively. My mannequin has this at round a 47% probability of a first-set tiebreak which earlier than I checked the costs on that, I believed may provide some worth. However, the markets have this eventuality to be much less worth than I believed it could be, with normal traces on over 12.5 video games within the first set being priced at simply over even cash.

In different matches, it is the huge names once more who’re short-priced to get wins. Tournament favorite Novak Djokovic, Diego Schwartzman and Dominic Thiem are throughout or sub 1.101/10 to get wins, whereas Denis Shapovalov is marginally greater for his conflict with Bernard Tomic.

Based on knowledge from the final couple of years, Tomic deserves to be a heavy underdog however there’s nonetheless that nagging doubt that he may get again to his finest at some stage – tomorrow can be a superb time for him to roll again the years and choose up a shock victory.

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