He started this season with a loss in Auckland last week. Shelton lost against Mensik after fighting for almost three hours on the court.<\/a> The Americans expect a lot from Ben here in Melbourne. He is a 21st seed with a favorable draw after the first round. This will be his third appearance in the Australian Open. Last year, Ben was upset by Adrian Mannarino in the third round, losing in five tight sets. His best result came in 2023 when he reached the quarterfinals, losing against Tommy Paul.<\/p>\nBrandon Nakashima has lost four of his last five matches. So far this season, he has played two preparation tournaments. In the opening tournament, Brandon lost in straight sets against Sonego in the opening round of the ATP Hong Kong. Last week in Adelaide, Brandon was upset by Hijikata in the second round, losing in three tight sets. Nakashima spent a lot of time last season on the Challenger Tour level, where he had decent results.<\/p>\n
Best Bet to Make<\/h2>\n
According to the bookies, Shelton is the favorite in this matchup, but we disagree. He underperformed in his opening match against Mensik. On the other hand, Nakashima has already played a couple of matches, and we believe that he is ready for his upcoming match. Both players are out of form, and we expect a tight match that could go either way.<\/p>\n
That being said, Nakashima covering the games handicap is a value bet.<\/strong><\/p>\nValue bet\/ the best odds: Brandon Nakashima +2.5 games handicap @1.91 @bet365
\n<\/strong>
\nMain photo credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATP Australian Open 1\/64-Finals Monfils – Mpetshi Perricard: 14.01.2025 02:30 CEST H2H: first meeting Gael Monfils has won five straight matches. Last week in Auckland, Monfils won the title, winning against Bergs in the final in straight sets as we predicted. Gael showcased great tennis and looked fit for his age on the court. Monfils […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5045,"featured_media":61211,"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":[1877,42709,16662,10956,348,144,18755,18805,209,22,19,1635],"class_list":["post-78122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-bets","tag-adrian-mannarino","tag-atp-australian-open","tag-ben-shelton","tag-brandon-nakashima","tag-frances-tiafoe","tag-gael-monfils","tag-giovanni-mpetshi-perricard","tag-jakub-mensik","tag-nick-kyrgios","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-reilly-opelka","tag-tommy-paul"],"modified_by":"David Barisic","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78122","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=78122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78123,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78122\/revisions\/78123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}