Our tennis man Andy Schooler previews Wednesday’s second-round action at the Australian Open.
Tennis betting tips: Australian Open matches
2pts Roberto Carballes Baena to beat James Duckworth at 4/5 (General)
1pt over 12.5 games in first set of Felix Auger-Aliassime v Alejandro Davidovich Fokina at 4/1 (General)
Roberto Carballes Baena v James Duckworth
Initially priced up as a pick ‘em affair, Carballes Baena has been backed into favouritism but I still feel there’s some value in his price of 4/5.
The Spaniard has started 2025 pretty well, beating seed Francisco Cerundolo en route to the Auckland quarter-finals last week and then defeating Alejandro Tabilo, the 23rd seed, in round one here in Melbourne.
Duckworth denied us in this column the other day but selection Dominic Stricker was very disappointing. Despite that win, the Aussie is still only 5-11 in the main draw of his home Grand Slam and I doubt RCB will be so flaky here.
Key could be the return of serve as that looks Duckworth’s big weakness, certainly in statistical terms.
Over the past 12 months in tour-level hardcourt matches, he’s broken serve only 12% of the time – Carballes Baena is up at 21% on the same metric.
As for service holds, the pair are virtually neck and neck, RCB holding 78% of service games and Duckworth 79%.
Advantage Spain, for me.
Felix Auger Aliassime v Alejandro Davidovich Fokina
Yesterday’s tie-break bet rather summed up how things have gone for this column so far this week.
After 11 service holds, Tallon Griekspoor decided game 12 was the time to throw in a shocker and he duly lost the opening set 7-5.
That bet was based largely on past history between the players and I’m going to use the same theory here.
These two have met three times before, with six of their nine sets going to a tie-break, including all four when they met at this very tournament in 2022.
There’s certainly more risk here than there was in Griekspoor v Hubert Hurkacz as FAA is clearly playing well right now, having won the title last week in Adelaide and I certainly can see a scenario where he is just too good for Fokina.
That said, the Spaniard is a dogged competitor, played a tie-break in the first set of his first-round match and clearly has been able to cause his opponent problems in the past.
I’ll going to take a punt on a first-set breaker given the price of 4/1 – it just looks too big.
Alternatives include a tie-break in the match at 22/25 (Unibet) and over 1.5 tie-breaks at 6/1 (Sky Bet).
Preview posted 1215 GMT on 14/01/25
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