Week Two Australian Open Tips

Coming up on Sunday, the hometown hero Alex de Minaur will play his fourth round tie against 28 year old, 10th seed Alexander Bublik. These two have a bit of history between them, with Bublik launching two major comeback victories against de Minaur in some big matches across last season.

What is also interesting about these two is the contrasting styles of the players. Bublik is a power hitter with a big serve and loves to win points early in rallies. For de Minaur, he is of a similar ilk to the way Rafa Nadal used to play, which is to never give up on any point.

I did not want to call how this one could play out, because both players have reasons I could see them taking this match. Instead, I turned to the set market. From there, I felt this one is going to be close, and taking it to go to four sets seems like a reasonable play for this top 10 showdown.

Moving onto the women’s side of the draw, there was some extreme value I saw in the matchup between young, budding star Nikola Bartunkova and WTA veteran Elise Mertens from Belgium.

In this one, Mertens will be the heavy favourite based on her ranking, holding the 21st seed in this tournament, but also due to the sheer amount of extra experience she has over her opponent. For Bartunkova, the reason she will have plenty of confidence heading into the Saturday afternoon contest is the calibre of wins she has produced throughout the tournament. As a qualifier, there was no doubt she was going to have a tough draw, which saw her beat the 10th seed Belinda Bencic in three sets during the second round.

While I am not certain Bartunkova can pull off another upset, I do think she could keep it close and cover the spread in this one.

When trying to find value in the men’s outright market, it can be difficult due to the significant drop off in talent between the top two players in the world and the rest of the field. For about 18 months now, men’s tennis has revolved around Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, and it is hard to see anyone getting past either of them.

However, if there were one man who could maybe get it done, it is the greatest hard court player of all time in Novak Djokovic. The legend of the game continues to compete at the highest level and has a chance at this stage to win yet another Australian Open title. Over his career, he has tasted glory in Melbourne 10 times, with the most recent coming in 2023, showing just how dominant he has been on this surface even as the game has begun to shift with Sinner and Alcaraz coming onto the scene.

Amanda Anisimova has quickly risen to the upper echelon of the WTA circuit and in 2025 announced herself as a future star of the game. She did this by reaching two Grand Slam finals last year at both Wimbledon and the US Open. While she did not win either of those matches, she will no doubt be better off for the experience of competing at the pinnacle of tennis, even if it did result in two losses.

This year, she can now lean on that experience from the last two Grand Slams of 2025 and ensure that when she finds herself in a position to win her first Grand Slam title, she gets over the line this time.

With her next chance coming at this year’s Australian Open, where she has so far cruised through the early rounds, who is to say Anisimova could not upset the likes of Iga Świątek and Aryna Sabalenka down the stretch of the competition.