Daily tennis tips: US Open best bets, betting analysis and accumulators Wednesday September 6

Tennis betting tips: US Open, Wednesday September 6

2pts Aryna Sabalenka to beat Qinwen Zheng 2-0 at 5/6 (bet365)

1pt Alex Zverev to win the first set v Carlos Alcaraz at 9/4 (bet365, William Hill)

Sporting Life’s Daily US Open Double

Qinwen Zheng v Aryna Sabalenka (1700 BST)

Sabalenka has bulldozered her way to the last eight, dropping only 16 games en route with her brand of power tennis.

Frankly, I’m struggling to see what Qinwen will do to halt her serene progress.

While she did beat last year’s runner-up Ons Jabeur in the last round, the Tunisian was a pale shadow of the player who did so well 12 months ago and the match as a whole wasn’t of the greatest quality.

Nine of the 18 games were won by the returner with the Chinese getting just 40% of her first serves in play – the third time in four rounds she has failed to hit the 50% mark.

I have grave concerns for how Sabalenka will treat her second serves – she’s won 64% of points on opponents’ second deliveries in the tournament thus far.

While it’s true that Sabalenka’s big-hitting game can go awry – Jelena Ostapenko gave us a classic example of that on Tuesday – the fact is she’s been much more consistent over the past 12 months or so with such ‘shockers’ few and far between, hence her impending rise to world number one.

While the set betting isn’t a market I venture into that often, I’m perfectly happy to back a straight-sets Sabalenka win here at 5/6.

Carlos Alcaraz v Alex Zverev (2nd night match; 1st at 2359 BST)

Zverev is carrying our outright money at 40/1 and he produced a fine display to see off Jannik Sinner the other night to keep hopes alive.

However, it took him four and a half hours to earn his victory in brutal conditions and you have to worry that will have left the tank a little empty for a meeting with an elite-level player who will be happy to take this deep if necessary.

We’ve seen in the past how Zverev losing sets early in a Grand Slam has come back to haunt him and this may well be the case here.

There is hope for the German though.

He leads the head-to-head 3-2 and is 2-0 on hardcourts, although I’m not going to read too much into that given a few of the matches took place well before Alcaraz hit the level he’s at now. Three of them were also on clay.

Perhaps the one which will be most significant for both men coming into this clash will be last year’s French Open quarter-final in which Zverev sprang the upset and forced the errors to flow from Zverev’s racquet.

My view of the market is that Zverev’s price is a little on the large size, although I do feel he has to make a fast start given the tennis in his legs.

That pushes me towards a couple of angles.

The first is for Alcaraz to win from behind at 4/1 (bet365) but the one I’m going with is for Zverev to win the first set at 9/4, which has happened in three of their five previous meetings.

He tends to give little away on serve early on and will have the power to stick with Alcaraz in the baseline rallies which look sure to be spectacular.

Posted at 0955 BST on 06/09/23

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