Draper continues superb run in New York
Jack Draper helped us with another win yesterday, this time as a solid underdog as he beat Felix Auger-Aliassime in straight sets in what (at least by name) was the biggest shock in the men's comp on day three.
The likes of Andy Murray, Matteo Berrettini, Nick Kyrgios and tournament favourite Daniil Medvedev all progressed, with the former duo meeting tomorrow in round three, and the latter duo seeded to meet in round four on Sunday - both will be hotly anticipated.
Moving back to today's schedule though, there's the usual abundance of heavy favourites which populate the early rounds of Grand Slams. The likes of Jannik Sinner, Marin Cilic, Carlos Alcaraz, Cameron Norrie, Andrey Rublev and Rafa Nadal are all expected to reach round three with minimal fuss tonight, leaving us with few competitive matches to discuss.
Brooksby and Coric fight it out to make round three
One match which the market is finding it difficult to choose between two players as favourite is the clash between Borna Coric and Jenson Brooksby, with Brooksby the marginal favourite at 1.9620/21 over the shock winner in Cincinnati several weeks ago.
Coric struggled past Enzo Couacaud in five sets on Tuesday in a match lasting in excess of four hours, and only won eight more points than the French qualifier in the process, so it's not been a faultless performance so far from the Croat. Conversely, Brooksby eased into this stage with a 78-minute retirement rout of Dusan Lajovic, dropping just two games in three sets.
This, in theory, should be a superb match between two of the highest potential players outside the top 20. My numbers make the market about right, with Brooksby's better return game giving him a slight edge over Coric's stronger serve, and the winner will be rewarded with a likely clash against Carlos Alcaraz in round three.
Kubler's improvement could be a problem for Tiafoe
The only spot where I feel the market has made a mistake is by pricing up Frances Tiafoe as the 1.412/5 heavy favourite for his meeting with Jason Kubler, and I think this is done on reputation as much as anything.
Kubler has shown his ability on the main tour of late with some strong performances on grass, and also was very strong several months ago in hard court Challenger Tour events as well. To me, he's clearly too good for Challengers at this time, but the market has perhaps taken a little while to cotton on.
Across all surfaces on the main tour in 2022, there's very little to choose between the two in terms of data, so apart from Tiafoe being higher ranked and therefore having a higher reputation, there doesn't seem to be a ton of logic suggesting Kubler should be a pretty heavy underdog here. It might be an ambitious way to look to continue a hat-trick of men's winners, but it looks to be the spot to me.