The United States and Canada will see two of their top representatives square off in the third round of the Australian Open, as Reilly Opelka and Denis Shapovalov do battle in Melbourne. Opelka’s serve and Shapovalov’s backhand are two of the more breathtaking weapons in men’s tennis, and the player who better imposes their top weapon will have the advantage in this match. Here, we look at Opelka vs Shapovalov in our tennis betting picks for the third round of the Australian Open.

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Reilly Opelka vs Denis Shapovalov

Why Bet On Opelka:

 Reilly Opelka’s serve is working so far at the Australian Open, as he has been broken just one time in his first two matches at this event. Opelka has dropped just 13 first serve points so far, and his first serve will get him out of trouble on a regular basis against a player in Shapovalov who was 45th in percentage of return games won last year and has been even worse to start 2022.

 Opelka has lost two of his six matches to start this year, but they came against a player who is on first and a player who is an all-time great. Those losses came against Maxime Cressy and Andy Murray, neither of which are bad losses. Shapovalov, meanwhile, is 5-1 but lost to Dan Evans and has needed three more sets than Opelka to get through the first two rounds.

 Shapovalov has played just under eight hours of tennis in the first two rounds of this tournament, compared to just four hours for Opelka. Having the fresher player with the ability to generate more free points at plus money is a decent value regardless of the outcome.

Reilly Opelka

Reilly Opelka has cruised through the first two rounds of his 2022 Australian Open campaign, winning all six sets he has competed in so far. He beat Kevin Anderson in straight sets in the first round, and Dominik Koepfer in straight sets in the second. Here, he faces a tougher opponent in Denis Shapovalov, but he also comes in having played half of the tennis that Shapovalov has over the first week of this event.

For Opelka, the recipe for success is no secret, as he needs to pound first serves in play and hope he can do enough on his return to get the job done. To his credit, Opelka’s start to the 2022 season has seen him break serve at just under 12% in 51 service games, which is a vast improvement over the near-8% break rate he achieved on hard courts in 2021. If he can put pressure on Shapovalov’s serve at all, Shapovalov’s erratic work from the ground could give Opelka a huge boost.

Denis Shapovalov

Denis Shapovalov has made it to the third round of the Australian Open, but he has certainly made it interesting along the way. Shapovalov beat Laslo Djere in four sets to kick off his tournament, and needed five sets to beat Kwon Soonwoo after dropping two of the three tiebreaks that took place in the first three sets of that match. Shapovalov will need to tighten things up in this match, though he faces an opponent in Opelka who will make that difficult.

Shapovalov has broken his opponents 11 times in his first two matches in Melbourne, and he knows he will be lucky to break at all against someone with Opelka’s serve. The questions for Shapovalov are twofold: can he generate any pressure against the Opelka serve, and can he tighten up his groundstrokes to better protect his own service games? If the answer to either of those questions is no, Shapovalov could be in for a long day down under.

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