The seeded players enter the ATP Miami Open on Friday when the second round of the latter part of the Sunshine double begins around the grounds on another good looking day of tennis at the Hard Rock Stadium in Florida.
It is the top half of the draw that is on show on Friday which means that the number one seed and defending champion Carlos Alcaraz is the headline act on show. There is a decent card supporting him so we should be in for a good day of action.
Stadium Court
Three matches take place in the men’s draw on the main court on Friday. The first of them comes after a women’s match gets the action going and when it does come along two home players go at it when Taylor Fritz meets Emilio Nava. Carlos Alcaraz then closes out the day session when he takes on Facundo Bagnis for a place in the third round. The other men’s match on the main court closes out the night session and it sees Alexander Zverev on court. He goes up against the Japanese player Taro Daniel.
Grandstand
Just the two matches take place on the Grandstand court on Friday and they bookend the action. We begin with the home player J.J. Wolf looking to pull off what would be a major upset against Andrey Rublev. Three women’s matches are then played out before the second of the men’s matches round out the show when the number three seed Casper Ruud, finalist here a year ago, looks to get his season going when he goes up against Ilya Ivashka.
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Butch Buchholz
There are three more ATP matches on the Butch Buchholz court on Friday and they are the opening three games to take place. We begin with the exciting Denis Shapovalov looking to light up the scene when he goes up against Guido Pella in what might be the pick of the clashes on the day. Jannik Sinner then takes to the court to go up against Laslo Djere before we finish off the men’s action when Australian Open semi-finalist Tommy Paul takes on the Swiss player Marc-Andrea Huesler.
Best of the Rest
There are eight other matches taking place around the grounds. You have to wait a while for the men to take to Court 1 but when they do Grigor Dimitrov and Holger Rune should draw in decent crowds. Botic van de Zandschulp and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina will grace Court 7 while on Court 5 we also get to see Roberto Bautista Agut, Diego Schwartzman, Miomir Kecmanovic and Maxime Cressy taking centre stage.
Betting
After an up and down first round where we were on course for a winner only for it to be voided and then getting off the mark for the week on Thursday, I’ll go with one bet over the course of Friday and it comes out on Court 7 where Botic van de Zandschulp might be vulnerable when he meets Alexei Popyrin. The Dutch player hasn’t really got going in 2023 yet. He is only 7-6 for the season and had that weird situation in Indian Wells where he pulled out of his singles match halfway through the second set only to play doubles the next day.
Of those seven wins, only one of them has been against a player in the top 50 of the world rankings so I’ve got to take the Dutchman on. Alexei Popyrin isn’t in the top 50 in the rankings but he has five wins in the last couple of weeks or so at Indian Wells, Phoenix and the first round here. He has a game which is suited to these conditions and you sense that if the Australian gets in front early he could break the back of this match quite quickly. Given what happened when van de Zandschulp fell behind last week it might be worth taking Popyrin with a firm who pay out once a set is completed but I like the Australian here.
Tips
Back A.Popyrin to beat B.van de Zandschulp for a 3/10 stake at 2.05 with Betfair
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