The First Round at the 2021 Australian Open was completed on Tuesday and there have only been a couple of real upsets so far in the event.
I do think that will change before we get into the second week, especially as players will build confidence the longer they go into the tournament, while some of the match rustiness may take a little longer to shake off completely.
Personally I am not that keen on seeing too many early upsets as it can take away some of the potentially huge matches we will get to see in the second week, but it is also good for the sport to have some uncertainty to encourage more people to tune in.
It is early, but the positives will be the solid start made through the first two days at the Australian Open for the Tennis Picks.
That is something to build upon, but I have been doing this for long enough to know it won't be all smooth sailing through the remainder of the Grand Slam. Hopefully the winning record from Day 1 and Day 2 can be extended at the start of the Second Round matches which begin on Wednesday.
Bianca Andreescu - 4.5 games v Su-Wei Hsieh: It would have been emotional for her fans, friends and family, but Bianca Andreescu couldn't hide her own feelings after winning her First Round match in three sets on Monday. The 2019 US Open Champion has not played since the end of that season as injuries caused a setback in her career, while Andreescu wasn't feeling comfortable enough to travel during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 anyway.
Regardless it will like a year has been lost for Bianca Andreescu who was as high as World Number 4 at the end of 2019- the pandemic has meant a change in the way the World Rankings will be generated in the immediate future and that has actually benefited Andreescu who comes into the Australian Open inside the top 10.
It is important for the Canadian to take advantage of that and that means producing plenty of wins in a short space of time to prevent a significant fall down the World Rankings. Bianca Andreescu pulled out of the warm up tournaments for precautionary reasons which would have been a worry to those who support her, but Andreescu looked good in winning in the First Round and will be looking to back that up.
This will be far from easy against Su-Wei Hsieh who had shown little appetite to develop as a Singles player until a surprising run to the Fourth Round at the Australian Open in 2018. It was the best run the South Korean had produced in a Singles tournament at a Grand Slam for ten years and she had regularly been an early loser in the majors, but in more recent times Su-Wei Hsieh has shown she can been an awkward customer as a Singles player.
She may have dropped back to Number 71 in the World Rankings, but the win over Tsvetana Pironkova in the First Round underlines the ability of Hsieh to frustrate opponents. Her game is one which throws in many slices and changes in speed and variation to try and bamboozle an opponent, but I would be surprised if Bianca Andreescu is overly concerned by what she sees from the other side of the court.
Su-Wei Hsieh's hard court numbers have been pretty average over the last thirteen months and in normal circumstances I would have expected Bianca Andreescu to be asked to cover at least one more game than the mark set for this Second Round match. That is taking into consideration the lack of competitive tennis the favourite would have been able to play, but Bianca Andreescu has some very strong numbers on the hard courts before the injury and she looked pretty good on Monday.
The big question will be how Andreescu is feeling the day after her first competitive match for fifteen months, but the opportunity in a Grand Slam to play every other day should help. In their sole previous meeting Bianca Andreescu was able to serve well enough to keep Su-Wei Hsieh under the cosh and I think she will be able to do that here.
Expect some good looking rallies to develop between two players that have most of the shots in their lockers, but I think Bianca Andreescu continues her comeback run with a good, solid win in the Second Round.
Marketa Vondrousova - 4.5 games v Rebecca Marino: You can't win a Grand Slam in the first week of the tournament, but you can go a long way to losing it if you spend unnecessary time on the court. That would be the negative view of Marketa Vondrousova's First Round win over Rebecca Peterson, but the Czech lefty looked on the brink of exiting the tournament before fighting back and turning things around having been a set and a break down.
She is a former Grand Slam Finalist having come up a little short at the French Open in 2019, but at 21 years old the best years are clearly in front of Marketa Vondrousova. This is the fourteenth Grand Slam that Vondrousova will be competing in, but she has only been beyond the Second Round twice and the development of a clearly improving player should see her improve that record across the board in the near future.
It can begin at the Australian Open this year and only injury has curtailed some of the obvious improvement that Marketa Vondrousova was making on the Tour. She missed the remainder of the 2019 season after a First Round exit at Wimbledon and the Covid-19 outbreak meant 2020 was far more uncertain for a player recovering from injury than for most others.
Getting more out of the first serve is important for Marketa Vondrousova if she is going to take significant steps on the hard courts, but this is a player who has more to come. I think she should be able to display some of the talent in this Second Round match and Vondrousova has tended to get the better of those players outside of the top 100 in the World Rankings when playing them on the hard courts.
In the Second Round the lefty takes on Rebecca Marino who is making a second comeback to the Tour- burnout was the reason Marino quoted for taking extended breaks from the Tennis Tour and at 30 years old she is perhaps more mature to deal with the pressures that are heaped on the shoulders of players. It also means it is a long road back for Marino who is outside the top 300 in the World Rankings, but this has already been a productive tournament with three Qualifying wins to enter the main draw and winning a First Round match.
Those have come against players much lower down the World Rankings than her opponent in the Second Round and the Canadian has historically struggled against top 50 players on the hard courts having produced a 3-12 record in those previous matches. Rebecca Marino has a decent serve which could give her a chance to put some pressure on Marketa Vondrousova, but the Canadian will need to make sure she gets plenty of first serves in play to keep that pressure on for long enough to earn the upset.
At this stage of her career I am not sure Rebecca Marino will be able to do that for long enough and it could see Marketa Vondrousova pull away after a competitive beginning.
Rebecca Marino just hasn't been used to playing at this level for a long time and it should mean a solid returner like Marketa Vondrousova is able to find the breaks of serve to cover the handicap set for this Second Round match.
Venus Williams - 4.5 games v Sara Errani: Two veterans meet in the Second Round in Melbourne having battled through tough First Round assignments. Venus Williams was the favourite to see off Kirsten Flipkens and moved through the gears in the second set to do so, while Sara Errani upset a Seeded opponent in three sets having dropped the first one.
The last time Venus Williams and Sara Errani met on the Tour came at the US Open in 2014 and it was a pretty remarkable match which saw the first two sets split with both winning 6-0. The Italian beat Venus for the first time that day in a final set tie-breaker and snapped her losing run to this opponent, but in the years since it is the seven time Grand Slam Champion who has kept her level relatively high.
Over the last fifteen months there have been signs that the best days are irreversibly gone, but Williams has played pretty well in the small sample of matches in 2021. The serve is no longer the weapon it once was, but Williams might be playing with some confidence after winning her First Round match and she is certainly not being matched up against a player in supreme form.
Sara Errani has won three Qualifying matches to enter the Australian Open, but she has fallen out of the top 100 in the World Rankings these days. The return of serve is the key for Errani, especially as her own serve has been extremely vulnerable throughout her career and even more so in the latter stages of it.
The competitor in Sara Errani has shown up when she has played against the better players on the Tour, although the numbers on the hard courts against top 100 Ranked opponents has shown that Errani has struggled behind the second serve in particular. Much of this match is going to depend on how much Sara Errani can get into the Venus Williams service games and whether she can use her defensive skills and energy around the court to extract mistakes from her older opponent.
Venus Williams has had some disappointing losses over the last thirteen months, but the draws have largely hindered her too with confidence perhaps not where it once was. The narrow loss to Petra Kvitova in the warm up to the Australian Open shows Venus Williams might still be able to produce enough quality to tennis to win a match like this one and the American should be ready for what she is going to face having played Kirsten Flipkens in the First Round.
I would not be surprised if there are a few breaks of serve in this match, but the majority should land in favour of Venus Williams and even the competitiveness of Sara Errani may not be enough for the veteran Italian to stay in touch with her throughout this match.
Novak Djokovic - 9.5 games v Frances Tiafoe: A number of the high profile players competing at the Australian Open looked very strong in the First Round, but the level of competition increases the further you go into a Grand Slam. Novak Djokovic will be well prepared to face that situation though and he will be very happy with his level after completely dismantling the Jeremy Chardy game in the First Round.
Novak Djokovic didn't give up a single break point and managed to break serve six times against an opponent he has dominated throughout their careers. Things will be different in the Second Round as he prepares to take on a young, athletic American in the form of Frances Tiafoe for the first time.
There is a lot to like about the Frances Tiafoe game and he does have the confidence that comes from a relatively easy First Round win, although the numbers suggest there is work to do if he is going to fulfil the potential he has. To really kick on from his Number 64 World Ranking, Frances Tiafoe has to develop across the board with his serve and return numbers being pretty average on the hard courts on which he would have grown up.
It is hard to make a case for the upset considering Tiafoe is just 3-15 against top 10 Ranked players on the hard courts and is 1-6 in Grand Slam matches against those opponents. He has held fewer than 70% of his service games in those Grand Slam matches and Frances Tiafoe is going to be more than a little aware of the kind of returning Novak Djokovic will be able to produce and especially so on the Melbourne courts on which he has thrived in his career.
If Novak Djokovic serves even close to the levels he was producing in the First Round it is going to be very difficult for Frances Tiafoe to compete over the best of five set format. Last year at the US Open Frances Tiafoe was dismantled by Daniil Medvedev, although he played a much closer match against the top Russian here in Melbourne.
However it was a day when Frances Tiafoe needed the inches to go his way and I think that is what he will need to even be competitive in this Second Round match. In the coming years Tiafoe might be operating at a higher level than he is at right now, but his serve is vulnerable and someone like Novak Djokovic is not going to want to spend more time than necessary on the court and the return game could lead to another comfortable win.
Stan Wawrinka - 1.5 sets v Marton Fucsovics: Recovering from injury and picking up some solid results has helped Stan Wawrinka move back inside the top 20 in the World Rankings, but he is someway away from the form that took him to Grand Slam wins in Melbourne, Paris and New York City. A solid win in the First Round will be encouraging for Stan Wawrinka, but he is going to need to be a little better when facing Marton Fucsovics who reached the Fourth Round last year.
Both players are solid hard court players but they operate in different ways to lead to successes- Wawrinka is the stronger server, but Fucsovics is the superior returner and I think that will lead to a good looking match as both players look to impose their game on the other.
A couple of wins in the preparation tournament for the Australian Open will give Stan Wawrinka further confidence and he is also benefiting from the fact that Marton Fucsovics had to play a long, tough match in the First Round that saw the Hungarian out on the court for over four hours.
It wasn't a really hot day on Monday, but it is still really difficult to recover from the length of time spent on court even with a day between matches. Much will depend on whether the energy will be sapped from the serve and Marton Fucsovics has had some troubles when facing Stan Wawrinka in the past.
These two players have met four times before and it is Stan Wawrinka who holds a 3-1 lead with the more important factor being a 3-0 lead on the hard courts. In each of the last three hard court matches between the players, Wawrinka has improved his returning numbers and he does have the edge when it comes to break percentage between the players.
The numbers have actually been pretty close despite the lead held by Stan Wawrinka, but I think the extra time spent on court by Marton Fucsovics will also be a factor in this match. When it comes down to it, both players will know that Wawrinka has tended to play the big points better than Fucsovics and I think that will lead to the higher Ranked player to come through in three or, more likely, four sets.
Emil Ruusuvuori - 1.5 sets v Pedro Martinez: Two young players who are Ranked in the 80s meet in the Second Round of the Australian Open and there are some major Ranking points on offer for the winner. Pedro Martinez upset Yoshihito Nishioka in the First Round, while Emil Ruusuvuori needed five sets to beat veteran Gael Monfils to get into this match and the biggest question for the latter may be how he responds to a long match.
He is young and I would expect the recovery to be strong for Emil Ruusuvuori who has the makings of a player that will be operating much higher up the World Rankings sooner rather than later. The Finnish player is also beginning to pick up his level when playing in the main ATP tournaments having had a really strong record in developmental tournaments and I do think he is going to feel pretty good about the match up.
The opponent is another young player looking to make his way on the professional Tour and Pedro Martinez has had some up and down moments when playing on the hard courts. In particular the serve has been vulnerable at this level and we saw some signs of that in the First Round win over Nishioka despite the fact he won the last three sets in that match 6-1 each time.
In 2020 Pedro Martinez held only 69% of the service games played on the hard courts, although he still managed to produce a 2-3 record in the five matches at main ATP level. All three defeats came against players that were Ranked inside the top 30 and I think that has to be respected, although Martinez has not had much joy playing against Emil Ruusuvuori.
These players have met twice before, once on the hard courts and once on the clay courts, and it is Emil Ruusuvuori who won both matches. It is perhaps no real surprise that Pedro Martinez has had some success in the return aspect in both matches, but Ruusuvuori has broken serve in 50% of the return games played and that is very hard to ignore.
It is harder to ignore when you think of some of the issues Martinez has had in protecting his serve on the hard courts and I am not too concerned that Emil Ruusuvuori only spent an extra hour on the court in his First Round win compared with his opponent in the Second Round. The feeling is that the Finn is the stronger hard court player and he can back that up by winning this match in three or four sets.
MY PICKS: Bianca Andreescu - 4.5 Games @ 1.91 Bet Fred (2 Units)
Marketa Vondrousova - 4.5 Games @ 1.80 Bet Victor (2 Units)
Venus Williams - 4.5 Games @ 1.83 Bet365 (2 Units)
Novak Djokovic - 9.5 Games @ 2.10 Bet Victor (2 Units)
Stan Wawrinka - 1.5 Sets @ 1.91 Paddy Power (2 Units)
Emil Ruusuvuori - 1.5 Sets @ 2.00 Paddy Power (2 Units)
Taylor Fritz @ 1.80 Bet365 (2 Units)
Adrian Mannarino @ 2.05 Bet Victor (2 Units)
Alize Cornet + 3.5 Games @ 2.00 Bet Fred (2 Units)
Bernarda Pera - 2.5 Games @ 1.72 Paddy Power (2 Units)
Elena Rybakina - 4.5 Games @ 1.72 Bet Victor (2 Units)
Australian Open 2021: 13-9, + 5.22 Units (44 Units Staked, + 11.86% Yield)
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