The second round of the US Open gets underway in the singles draws in New York on Wednesday and the doubles competitions also get started as the final Grand Slam of the year continues at Flushing Meadows.
We are back to the sides of the draw that were in action on the opening day of the tournament which means that the defending champions Novak Djokovic and Coco Gauff are the star attractions on a decent schedule.
Arthur Ashe Stadium
The American star Madison Keys is the player given the honour of opening up the show on the main court when she plays her second round match against the Australian player Maya Joint who is playing the bigger match of her career here. When they are done Frances Tiafoe will look to continue his good recent record at this tournament when he closes out the day session with a match against Alexander Shevchenko. The night session sees the two reigning champions on show with Coco Gauff the first of them. She meets Tatjana Maria and when they are done Novak Djokovic continues his title defence against his fellow Serbian player Laslo Djere.
Louis Armstrong Stadium
We begin with the women’s match in the day session on the Louis Armstrong Stadium as Paula Badosa looks to continue her rise up the rankings when she takes on the home player Taylor Townsend in what should be an entertaining affair. When they are done our main men’s outright bet Alexander Zverev takes to the court for a clash with Alexandre Muller before the day session concludes with the Cincinnati champion Aryna Sabalenka looking to move closer to a first US Open title when she meets Lucia Bronzetti. We have two matches in the night session as always with Victoria Azarenka opening up the evening when she meets Clara Burel who produced a stunning comeback against Sloane Stephens in the opening round. When they are done potentially the match of the day takes place when Matteo Berrettini meets the American number one Taylor Fritz.
Grandstand
We have a full schedule on the Grandstand on Wednesday and we get underway with the Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova looking to move closer to a third Grand Slam title when she faces Elena Gabriela Ruse. Qinwen Zheng survived a tricky test with Amanda Anisimova in the first round and she has another in the second round when she faces Erika Andreeva. The last two matches on this court are both men’s matches with the first of them seeing Ben Shelton going up against Roberto Bautista Agut before and entertaining looking contest between Casper Ruud and Gael Monfils rounds out the action.
Court 17
Another good looking schedule takes place over on Court 17 on Wednesday with Grigor Dimitrov getting the action underway when he takes on Rinky Hijikata before Andrey Rublev looks to continue what has been a decent summer when he faces Arthur Rinderknech. Two women’s matches round off the show in this part of Flushing Meadows with the home player Emma Navarro going up against Arantza Rus before two Ukrainian players will face off to close out the show as Elina Svitolina will be hoping for a much more comfortable passage into the third round when she meets Anna Kalinina.
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Best of the Rest
There are still some singles matches dotted around the grounds on Wednesday although a lot of the outside court action will see the doubles tournaments getting started. Court 5 has delivered some excellent tennis already this week and the likes of Jiri Lehecka, Marta Kostyuk, Lorenzo Musetti and Daria Kasatkina will be looking to add to that while elsewhere the Canadian Open champion Alexei Popyrin, Olympic silver medallist Donna Vekic, Francisco Cerundolo and Ekaterina Alexandrova are some of the other seeded players on show.
Men’s Betting
There isn’t a huge amount that I like in the men’s draw on Wednesday but a couple of favourites look worthy of support. One of those is the Canadian Open champion Alexei Popyrin who cruised into the second round. He meets Pedro Martinez who had anything but a cruise in the first round. He went to a deciding set tiebreak in a match that lasted 4h23 in pretty intense heat and that was against the world number 194. Popyrin is a serious upgrade playing some of his best tennis and I expect him to ease into the third round. Conditions are expected to be brutal on Wednesday so the fresher man should have enough of an advantage anyway without the gulf in quality between the two. Popyrin to cover 6.5 games looks good to me.
Miomir Kecmanovic is another player who was involved in a humdinger of a first round match. It was so brutal that his opponent Yoshihito Nishioka collapsed in the final set and while that saved the Serb another half an hour or so of on court time, backing it up in even more brutal conditions isn’t going to be easy. He now faces Lorenzo Musetti who himself went over three hours with Reilly Opelka in the first round but to be fair to the Italian rallies against him aren’t overly taxing. Musetti has really kicked on this year and while his best efforts have come on clay, I don’t think he’s a bad hard court player by any stretch of the imagination and I think he has a five game margin of victory in him here.
Women’s Betting
There isn’t a huge amount that I like in the women’s draw either. In fact, I think most of the favourites are fair prices and hard to oppose but there is one favourite who might well be worth getting on and that comes in the form of Yafan Wang and Diane Parry with the latter looking to dispose of a second Chinese player in as many matches having come through against Xiyu Wang in two tiebreak sets in the first round.
Yafan Wang had the fortune of Maria Sakkari withdrawing from their match at the end of the first set but Wang had won that set and looked to be in decent touch, which probably shouldn’t be a surprise when we consider that in this hard court summer the Chinese player has wins over Karolina Pliskova, Erika Andreeva and Sofia Kenin among others while three of her losses were against Victoria Azarenka, Coco Gauff and Elina Svitolina with two of those three in deciding sets. That win for Parry in the first round was her first of the summer and I think Wang will have her number here.
Tips
Back A.Popyrin (-6.5 games) to beat P.Martinez for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with William Hill
Back Y.Wang to beat D.Parry for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with William Hill
Back them here:
Back L.Musetti (-4.5 games) to beat M.Kecmanovic for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Coral
