US Open Tennis Tips: Uncle Sam goes for Slam

IT'S the start of the men’s fourth round on Sunday and it’s another big day for my two big-priced outright wagers in the bottom half of the draw.

I’ve got American Sam Querrey and Lucas Pouille in action in New York on day seven and both are market favourites to progress to the last eight but both have tricky-looking assignments.

I lost Roberto Bautista-Agut to a good performance from Juan Martin Del Potro on Saturday but that one was mainly a wager in case Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal fell early which they didn’t.

Andrey Rublev backers would have enjoyed the Russian’s win over Damir Dzumhur but he fell a couple of games short of covering the -5.5 games handicap having led 6-4 6-4 2-0 which was a little disappointing.

There may be some rain around early on Sunday but it’s set to clear up by the afternoon so hopefully they’ll get all the matches in on day seven.

Querrey, whose record against lefties is hit and miss, with a win over Nadal this season (in the Acapulco final on outdoor hard) and losses to Adrian Mannarino, Donald Young and Thomaz Bellucci.

He’s also lost six times to Feli Lopez and was beaten by Gilles Muller on grass this summer so versus those two lefties that like to come to the net Querrey has struggled.

It’s a first meeting with Mischa Zverev and Querrey will need to be at his best in what looks to me like it could be a real test, with nothing between them also on the hold/break stats over the last 12 months on outdoor hard at main level.

Both men are on a total of 107.4 and I’m tempted by the 2.95 on over 1.5 tie breaks here, despite us profiting twice from ‘no tie breaks’ with Querrey this week.

This assignment looks much tougher than the likes of Dudi Sela and Radu Albot, who are weak servers, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one go the distance, but it’s a late night match in slower conditions, so the chances of tie breaks decrease.

If you're not on the Querrey outright there's a hint of value in Zverev in this match but for me it's a no bet.

According to the odds Kevin Anderson has the easiest of the fourth -ound matches today and the hold/break stats say that too, with Paulo Lorenzi comfortably the worst of today’s eight men in that regard.

Lorenzi’s total is only 95.2 and with Anderson one of the five players today on around 107 (107.5) and also having beaten the Italian three times from three meetings it’s hard to see an upset in this one.

Finally, Lucas Pouille goes for us at around 5.30pm UK time on Grandstand and this looks like it will be a tough test against Diego Schwartzman who actually has the best hold/break total of any of the eight players on display today.

The Argentine is currently on 107.8, which is a fair way ahead of Pouille’s 100.3, but the Frenchman is a big- match player and I’m hopeful he can get through this one.

It has the feel of a bit of a battle about it, with Schwartzman breaking serve 33.3% of the time and Pouille very up and down in his level from one set to the next.

Over 38.5 games is likely here but I certainly don’t see any value on Pouille at 1.74 and if you’re not involved in the outright on Pouille backing Schwartzman as underdog is a decent wager.

For my Denis Shapovalov v Pablo Carreno Busta preview see the latest blog at unibet.co.uk.

Seans's Best Bet

• 2pts win Carreno Busta to beat Shapovalov
• (11-10, Unibet)

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