It was a very good first week for our bets at the US Open, with another two winners on Saturday taking us to an eight points profit for the opening week in New York.
Alexander Zverev’s 3-1 win over Aljaz Bedene provided a 3.65 winner, while another tight one went our way when Alexei Popyrin just did enough to cover the +4.5 games handicap in a four-set battle with Matteo Berrettini.
We’re expecting a bit more humidity on Sunday, at around 50%, in 25C heat in the shade and some wind as well, with 20kph speeds forecast.
Round four of the US Open in the last seven years has seen its fair share of underdogs, with an average of 27% of them winning (33% in the last three years).
There have been plenty of tie break matches in this round, too, with the 57% of the last seven years (and also the last three years) being the joint-highest of any round, along with the quarter finals and final.
But at first glance at the matches on offer on Sunday the underdog with the best chance of an upset would have to be David Goffin, who we have to lose in the semi finals at 20-1.
In order to do that Goffin will have to beat Roger Federer, but I see few reasons why he can’t cause an upset on his best form and given that Federer has regularly underachieved (by his standards) at the US Open in the last decade.
The main factor for me where Goffin may let us and himself down is belief: he has a habit of starting well against the elite, but then crumbling if he doesn’t take the opening set having been the better player in it.
We saw it in spectacular fashion at Wimbledon against Novak Djokovic and also just prior to that in the Halle final versus Federer when the Swiss said of that match: “He was the better player for the first 10 games of the match. He had more chances, big chances too. Then I played a really good tiebreaker.”
If we look at Goffin’s results against Federer, Djokovic and Rafael Nadal lately we find that he’s either won a set or played a tie break in five of his last seven matches against them.
And given that he should have done one or the other against Djokovic in that Wimbledon match there’s reason to assume that he’ll have his chances again this time.
Hopefully, after making a first M1000 final a few weeks ago his often-questionable belief will be high and more so after toughing out three tight sets against Pablo Carreno Busta (he could have lost all three), raising his game at the right time.
Federer dismissed a poor Dan Evans in his last match, after which Evans said: “To try and beat him [Federer] feeling tired, stiff, playing four sets yesterday, it’s near on impossible.”
The reality is that Evans has a point regarding the scheduling: Fed played a day earlier under the roof when the rain came, but the Brit’s game doesn’t hurt someone with the variety of Federer.
Goffin’s ability to take the ball early and strike cleanly, combined with great movement can be a test for anyone in these conditions, but he’s got to serve well.
He did that very well against Carreno Busta, hitting his spots nicely and firing down 17 aces in three sets, and if he does that again he’s got a chance, but you feel he has to start well.
Should Goffin come through that test he’ll take on the winner of Alex De Minaur and Grigor Dimitrov and surely that will be De Minaur.
Dimitrov revealed probably more than he meant to when he said: “It's been a rough road the past months, I definitely didn't expect to be here in the fourth round.”
And we can see from his stats from the last three months (3-6 win/loss and a hold/break total of 97) that he’s a long way below his best form at the moment and he’s been a little lucky to get this far.
Round one opponent, Andreas Seppi was coming off his usual summer hip infiltration, while round two slated opponent Borna Coric withdrew and Kamil Majchrzak was coming off consecutive five setters.
Dimitrov hasn’t appeared to be close to a breakthrough and a return to his old form from what I’ve seen from him this tournament and in contrast Atlanta champion De Minaur is in fine form.
And I would have thought that ADM will simply make too many balls for Dimitrov, whose backhand is still an obvious target for opponents that want to force the Bulgarian into errors off that wing.
De Minaur impressed again in taking down Kei Nishikori for the loss of just one set and his stats now on this surface in the last three months are now 8-3 win/loss and with a hold/break total of 111.9.
That number is made up of 89.4% holds, which is very impressive, but it should be noted that he’s faced Opelka twice and Tomic once in those stats, so he’ll do very well to stay at that number of holds longer term.
Given the disparity in their respective levels I’m happy to go with De Minaur -1.5 sets here at a price of around the 1.82 mark.
Novak Djokovic seemed to be in much better physical shape in his last match against Denis Kudla than he’d encouraged us to believe and assuming that there’s not a great deal wrong with him he should be too solid for Stan Wawrinka again.
Amazingly, the pair haven’t clashed since Wawrinka upset Djokovic in the final here in New York three years ago and the only occasions that Stan has beaten Nole since 2006 have all come at majors.
Injuries have affected both players since that 2016 New York final and you’d have to say that the physical issues have been more of a problem for Wawrinka, who’s shown only flashes of his best form since his year off from 2017-2018.
Wawrinka hasn’t really shown any obvious signs that he’s heading back to the sort of form of a few years ago and he’d need that to topple Djokovic here – assuming the Serb doesn’t have injury issues on the day.
And in the last round four match on Sunday it would also need a physical issue one would think for Daniil Medvedev to lose to Dominik Koepfer.
Assuming Medvedev still has some energy in those well-used legs of his the Russian doesn’t lose often these days to players ranked outside the top-100 (lost two of his last 20) and Koepfer is bound to be nervous.
I said the other day that if Nikoloz Basilashvili didn’t improve he looked vulnerable against this in-form Koepfer, but it’s an entirely different challenge for the German on Sunday.
Medvedev gives you nothing, making very few unforced errors, and all things being equal he should win this, but I still think there’s a physical let down coming for Medvedev soon, and that would worry me if I were a 1.16 backer of the Russian.
Best Bet
1 point win De Minaur -1.5 sets to beat Dimitrov at 1.82
