Last week in Adelaide, Zhang lost in the opening round against Shapovalov in straight sets, as we had predicted.<\/a> Last year in Melbourne, Zhang lost in the second round against Humbert in four sets. He has never made it past the second round in the Australian Open.<\/p>\nHolger Rune has won three of his last five matches. So far this season, Rune has only played one preparation tournament. At the beginning of the season, Holger played in Brisbane, losing against Lehecka in the opening round in straight sets. Rune had a disappointing 2024 season and hopes for a better season this year. Last year in Melbourne, Rune was upset by Cazaux in the second round, losing in four sets.<\/p>\n
Best Bet to Make<\/h2>\n
According to the bookies, Rune is the favorite in this matchup, and we agree. Even though Holger is out of form, we still believe he is a better hard-court player than Zhang. Zhizhen is also out of form. He has not had consecutive wins since September last year. We expect Rune to start this season better than last year and win comfortably.<\/p>\n
That being said, Rune covering the games handicap is a value bet.<\/strong><\/p>\nValue bet\/ the best odds: Holger Rune -4.5 games handicap @1.83 @bet365<\/p>\n<\/strong>Main Photo Credit: Andy Abeyta\/The Desert Sun \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATP Australian Open 1\/64-Finals Coric – Garin: 14.01.2025 02:30 CEST H2H: 2-1 Borna Coric has lost three of his last five matches. Coric had a disappointing 2024 season. The former world number 12 has struggled with his form for a while. So far this season, Coric has only played in the United Cup. In the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5045,"featured_media":65325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17400],"tags":[10875,42709,346,1370,776,1219,348,7605,13325,347,8561],"class_list":["post-78110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-bets","tag-arthur-cazaux","tag-atp-australian-open","tag-borna-coric","tag-christian-garin","tag-denis-shapovalov","tag-felix-auger-aliassime","tag-frances-tiafoe","tag-holger-rune","tag-jiri-lehecka","tag-taylor-fritz","tag-zhizhen-zhang"],"modified_by":"David Barisic","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5045"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78111,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78110\/revisions\/78111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}