A big slate of third-round matches as the draw starts to take shape, with plenty of value on offer in the men\u2019s bracket.<\/p>\n
LEG 1 – Tommy Paul<\/strong><\/p>\n The American was out of sorts last year, but has returned in 2026 after an extended injury break following the US Open and looks back to his best.<\/p>\n He\u2019s yet to drop a set in this tournament and has completely owned Alejandro Davidovich-Fokina throughout his career. With a 4-0 head-to-head record, Paul smashed ADF the last time they met at last year\u2019s Australian Open, winning 6-1 6-1 6-1.<\/p>\n With ADF pushed to five sets by Opelka last round, Paul looks primed to dominate again.<\/p>\n LEG 2 – Learner Tien<\/strong><\/p>\n The 20-year-old American has shown enough in this tournament to suggest he should be too good for Nuno Borges.<\/p>\n Borges\u2019 path here raises some concerns. He beat an unwell Auger-Aliassime in round one and then needed four sets to get past Jordan Thompson, who is still working his way back after an injury-hit season.<\/p>\n Tien\u2019s hard-court metrics over the past 12 months are clearly stronger, so backing the Next Gen Finals champion makes sense.<\/p>\n LEG 3 – Alexander Zverev<\/strong><\/p>\n Zverev can drift in and out of matches early in majors, but Cam Norrie shapes as no real threat here.<\/p>\n Zverev leads the head-to-head 6-1, with Norrie\u2019s only win coming back in 2013 when both players were ranked outside the top 800. Aside from their five-set battle at last year\u2019s Australian Open, Zverev hasn\u2019t dropped a set in the other five meetings.<\/p>\n LEG 4 – Andrey Rublev<\/strong><\/p>\n Rublev trails Francisco Cerundolo 3-1 head-to-head, but three of those matches were on clay where the Argentine holds a clear advantage.<\/p>\n Their most recent meeting at the 2024 Paris Masters went Cerundolo\u2019s way in two tiebreaks, but that came during a rough stretch for Rublev while Cerundolo was in strong form.<\/p>\n Since late July, Cerundolo is just 9-9 on hard courts and 2-7 against top-50 opposition. With Rublev starting 2025 well on hard courts, the Russian looks set to turn the tables.<\/p>\n Multi = $4.61<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A big slate of third-round matches as the draw starts to take shape, with plenty of value on offer in the men\u2019s bracket. LEG 1 – Tommy Paul The American was out of sorts last year, but has returned in 2026 after an extended injury break following the US Open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":21570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21571,"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21568\/revisions\/21571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prdextblog01.bluebet.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}