US Open Day 2 Preview and Tip: Kokkinakis to push Tsitsipas at 6/5

• Tsitsipas needs a new plan

• Kokkinakis typically keeps it close

• 6/5 tip to keep Tsitsipas honest

Stefanos Tsitsipas might finally be ready to grow up. The 26 year old has been coached throughout his career by his father, but last week he decided to remove his old man from his team.

For years, his father Apostolos has sat court-side seemingly aggravating his offspring by winding him up and distracting him from the job at hand.

It has been a long time coming, with many tennis fans questioning why he didn't do it a lot sooner. Tsitsipas has got pretty far under his father's tutelage reaching third in the world and making the final of both the Australian and French Opens.

However, he's never been able to go the final mile and very recently had a farcical defeat to Novak Djokovic who was playing on one leg at the Olympics.

Tsitsipas needs to shake-up what is becoming a stagnating career of diminshing returns, and it seems he is now starting that process.

There is doubt about what to expect from the Greek, and this might be an opportune moment to play him. His first round opponent Thanasi Kokkinakis is capable of testing where he's at, but he has made a career of falling short.

What to expect from Tsitsipas

Results and performances in Montreal and Cincinnati suggest that Tsitsipas isn't firing on all cylinders. A struggling win over Jan-Lennard Struff sandwiched between defeats to veteran Kei Nishikori and Britain's Jack Draper is not a report card to be proud of.

Draper remarked in his defeat of the Greek that he had a clear game plan to attack his opponent's fragile backhand wing. That is clearly the area of the Tsitsipas game that will need to be improved if he is to close the gap on the sport's leading players.

For now, Tsitsipas has paired with his childhood friend Dimitris Chatzinikolaou to guide his career. It is a temporary solution but ultimately he will need to find an expert coach that can help him to either repair or mask his weaknesses.

New York has never been happy hunting ground for Tsitsipas, who has yet to navigate beyond the third round. He has been defeated here in three of the past four seasons as a sub 1.21/5 favourite.

Despite that record, I still think that Tsitsipas will find a way through this first round against an opponent he knows very well.

Kokkinakis is the nearly man

There will be no secrets between Tsitsipas and Kokkinakis, who are known to frequently practice together. This familiarity should favour the better player, which is evidently Tsitsipas.

On tour they've played out only one match before - a five set thriller won by Tsitsipas in the second round of the 2021 Australian Open. There is a good chance that a similarly complex match may be on the cards here.

That would be very much in keeping with the career of Kokkinakis who has a career resume of close but no cigar defeats. In this season alone Kokkinakis has gone to five sets on five occasions. Even when he's the better player on paper it is typically a real struggle for Kokkinakis.

Heading into New York Kokkinakis has been playing well, with his serve and forehand in good shape. As is usually the case for him his good run was ended in heartbreaking fashion by defeat in Cincinnati to Hubert Hurkacz in a final set tie-break.

Kokkinakis will know which buttons to press in this match-up with Tsitsipas and for spells of the match it will likely prove successful. However, Tsitsipas is likely to find a way over the line.

A value way to back this outcome is to back Tsitsipas to win and both players to win a set at 6/52.20.

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