Australian Open Men's Quarter-Final Tips

Australian Open Men's Quarter-Final Tips: Sinner and Medvedev to make last four

Dan Weston previews the remaining men's singles quarter-finals at the Australian Open on Wednesday as four players bid to join Rafael Nadal, who won his last eight clash this morning, in the semis...

The King of Clay had to do it the hard way in his quarter-final against Denis Shapovalov, racing into a two set lead before the Canadian pegged him back to force a decider. However, Nadal prevailed 6-3 in the final set in a match where he only won 13 more points than his opponent, and a below-average 35% of return points.

Nadal may need to improve if he is to emerge victorious on Sunday. We don't yet know who he will be facing, though, with Gael Monfils and Matteo Berrettini in play at the time of writing, as they compete for the right to face him.

Those, of course, were the first quarter-finals of the round, with the remaining matches taking place on Wednesday, so I'll discuss those Wednesday matches below.

Market right to say Sinner will sink Tsitsipas

Stefanos Tsitsipas picked up a winner for us on Monday against Taylor Fritz, but at what cost? The match lasted five sets and took almost three and a half hours, and the Greek has dropped sets in each of his last three matches - probably not ideal preparation for facing Sinner, who has dropped just the one set en route to this stage.

Jannik Sinner is the favourite at [ 1.76] on the Exchange. The 12 month hard court data disputes that, with Tsitsipas 2.3 winning 4% more service points and only having a slight deficiency on return. However, we must also factor in that Sinner is on a strong upward curve and is better now than he was during the first half of that sample, and six-month data makes him a marginal favourite. Factor in that he should be the fresher player as well, and I think the market has this about right.

The last quarter-final of the round features tournament favourite, Daniil Medvedev, against Felix Auger-Aliassime, with the Russian a very strong 1.15 favourite to make the semi-finals. He's picked up pretty routine straight-set wins over Auger-Aliassime on hard court in both their meetings in the last six months, and at a similar starting price as well.

On this basis, it looks reasonable to assert that Auger-Aliassime has plenty to find to test Medvedev, and hard court data backs up that assertion. Medvedev has over a 9% edge on combined service/return points won on hard court in the last year, and has started the season in impressive fashion as well, holding serve well over 90% of the time.

It would be a real shock if Medvedev exited on Wednesday, and I can't dispute the market pricing in either match - no recommendation from me for the remaining quarter-finals.