The US Open is here! Tennis fans and bettors across the world are excited. Looking at tennis odds, what are some of the best bets you can make for day two of the final grand slam of the year? Let’s take a look at some of today’s matchups.
Tuesday, August 31, 2021 – 02:20 PM EDT at Court 9
Tallon Griekspoor’s moment is coming. At 25, he has a world of talent but has yet to really make his mark on the main draw. He won some matches earlier this year in Montpellier, beating Marcos Giron and blowing match points against Ugo Humbert. From there, he’d go three sets with Jeremy Chardy shortly after, beat Denis Kudla in Acapulco and fall to the dangerous Casper Ruud in three grueling sets.
Griekspoor just has a game for this surface. He can make life difficult for you in his service games, possessing a big serve and a huge forehand he can use in combination. He’s got power, and that plays up on hardcourts.
In a match like this, I give Griekspoor a good chance to win. With that said, cashing tickets on big underdogs like this can be a tough ask at a Grand Slam, so I like the game spread a lot better.
Griekspoor will run into Jan-Lennard Struff, a player in bad form. He had an unconvincing win over Thiago Monteiro at the Olympics before losing three straight, including a terrible loss to Dominik Koepfer in Cincinnati. It wasn’t until he played a poor hardcourt opponent in Gianluca Mager that he actually picked up a win.
Griekspoor and Struff have similar play styles, both relying on power and their serves to get them free points. On quick surfaces like the hard courts in Flushing Meadows, Queens, I don’t think there will be many breaks to be found. That’s my rationale for recommending the game spread.
The 25-year-old from the Netherlands could easily take this match, and I will have exposure to the moneyline as well, but he has played well enough to keep things close in the past.
He nearly covered the game spread at Wimbledon against Alex Zverev and has been fantastic all year against the spread. He also holds a 34-18 record on the year, with five wins in seven hardcourt matches.
Struff is 22-22 this year, and was 22-22 last year as well, holding a 7-9 record on this surface.
Tennis Pick: Griekspoor +5.5 (-117) at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
Tuesday, August 31, 2021 - 08:15 PM EDT at Louis Armstrong Stadium
In one of our night matches, we have a rivalry renewed between American Taylor Fritz and young Australian hopeful Alex De Minaur. The Aussie has taken all four meetings between the two, though one of those meetings was on the Challenger circuit and one was at the ATP NextGen Finals, which uses different scoring than a normal tennis match.
Fritz and De Minaur have both played a lot of matches since then. Their last meeting was back in 2019 when De Minaur was having perhaps the run of his career, going to the Basel final where he lost to Roger Federer in a fun match. Back then, De Minaur’s speed and relentlessness made him a tough out in any match, and he picked up some big wins at the U.S. Open to boot.
That’s just not what we’ve seen this year out of De Minaur. He is just 8-8 on outdoor hard courts this year and 1-1 indoors, good for exactly a .500 record. It’s hardly the dominant showing you’d expect the World No. 17 to have, and it’s only seemed to get worse in recent weeks.
De Minaur has lost four of five, and his only win was a result of a tired opponent, with Filip Krajinovic running out of steam after a first-set bagel of De Minaur.
Fritz doesn’t come in with great form either since he had to work back from a knee injury, but he at least went to the semifinals in Atlanta, earlier this month. He’s also picked up some very valuable experience over the last couple of years, particularly in Grand Slams. He calls himself a “third-round bot” because of all the third rounds he seems to reach and lose in, and I think he should reach that stage at the very least here.
I think Fritz should be able to use his big forehand to get the win over his foe, with a very loud crowd on his side under the lights in Queens I like him for my tennis pick here.
Tennis Pick: Fritz ML (+157) at BetOnline
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.