US Open Daily Double: Unreliable Tiafoe a short price against Schwartzman

Sean Calvert
03 September 2022

Schwartzman has had the better of the career series with Tiafoe

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Round three of the 2022 US Open completes on Saturday and Sean Calvert returns with his final daily double of this year's tournament...

"Tiafoe has only held serve 67% of the time in those three matches against Schwartzman..."

The remaining spots in week two of the 2022 US Open are up for grabs on Saturday and we're expecting another warm New York day at around 28C in the shade.

We managed to find a handy 4.22 winner on Friday, with Daniil Medvedev beating Yibing Wu in fewer than 29.5 games and Matteo Berrettini defeating Andy Murray, with the latter also winning a set, so that was pleasing.

On to Saturday and Frances Tiafoe is 31-26 win/loss (54% win rate) at main level when priced up as 1.51/2 to 1.695/7 favourite (17-13 on outdoor hard only), so while he has a slight winning record, he's hardly a player to trust at a price like Saturday's 1.558/15.

And if we also throw into the mix Tiafoe's career series record against Diego Schwartzman he begins to look like a shaky favourite.

The pair have met on three previous occasions: one on hard, one on indoor hard and one on clay and Tiafoe has only held serve 67% of the time in those three matches.

Schwartzman has held serve 10% more often at 77% of the time and two of the matches were played in lively conditions in Cincy and Vienna.

If we look at the combined service points won/return points won of the pair in those three matches, it's Schwartzman that leads the way by 103 to 97, so I wouldn't be backing Tiafoe at what looks a skinny price on Saturday.

The layers are assuming that Tiafoe's big game will be too much for Schwartzman to handle, but over the best of five sets I'd expect Tiafoe's game to have its usual ups and downs.

So far in Tiafoe's career in majors he's only made it past the last-16 on one occasion (2019 Australian Open) and versus top-20 ranked opponents (at the time of the match) he's won just 25% of the time (15-46 win/loss).

If Tiafoe is to win this one he'll have to play his best tennis and keep it up for a long period of time - something I'm not going to back him to do at 1.558/15 against a returner like Schwartzman.

I like the Schwartzman over 18.5 player games in this one, given the way the career series has gone, and I wouldn't be surprised if this match went all the way to a fifth set.

So, Schwartzman over 18.5 games at 1.84/5 is the first leg of Saturday's double and for the second leg I'm taking Brandon Nakashima to test Jannik Sinner.

Sinner hasn't really got to grips with the US Open yet, with his eight main draw matches yielding a 5-3 win/loss score and a combined service points won/return points won total of 104.

Not a bad set of stats, but the calibre of player he's faced hasn't been the best, with half of his opponents being ranked outside the top-90 and in some cases well outside the top-150.

Only twice has Sinner recorded a US Open main draw win in under 36.5 games: a few days ago versus Christopher Eubanks, and in 2021 (by a single game) against Max Purcell.

Nakashima, in his six US Open matches, has recorded a 4-2 win/loss mark and a combined service points won/return points won total of 107 and he's faced some good opposition - only the ageing Paulo Lorenzi and Pavel Kotov could be considered weak opponents.

He's yet to drop a set this US Open against Kotov and Grigor Dimitrov and if we take the all-time main level stats on outdoor hard there isn't much to choose between Sinner and Nakashima.

Nakashima's combined service points won/return points won total is 104, with Sinner on exactly the same mark, while Sinner is slightly ahead in terms of hold/break totals by 106 to 103.

With this in mind, I expect this to be a close match, and Sinner looks a shade short at 1.331/3, so the over 36.5 games at 1.674/6 makes leg two of Saturday's double at odds of 3.02/1.