ATP Tennis Aussie Open Feb 17

Just to be clear, and not that anyone in Australia cares what I think, it’s ridiculous that the men’s semi-finals are split up. Let Thursday be the WTA day, let Friday be the ATP day, everyone has equal rest coming into their finals.

So, so dumb.

Anyway, onto the semis where I can hopefully erase a horrible melt from Rafa.

I’ve written extensively the last two rounds about Djokovic and his numbers this week and how they compare to his career norms. He is serving like a different person, now eclipsing 20 aces in two separate matches this week, which is helping him hold serve a little above his career averages on a hard court (this is also probably because he played guys like Fritz and Raonic who don’t break serve that often). Otherwise, he actually breaking serve just below his career averages; again against Zverev he was not able to eclipse the 30% number. Like his hold percentage that could be because of opposition - Taifoe, Fritz, Raonic and Zverev are all well known for their serves. So, if Djokovic is playing pretty close to his expected levels and Karatsev has a massive lack of ATP data, can we at least just try to compare them this week? The first super surprising thing is that Karatsev has WAY less court time than Djokovic. I can’t find any similar examples for this situation. Usually Djokovic rolls over his early opposition and therefore has a rest advantage at this stage of the tournament or at the very least the time on court is pretty close and no one has a distinct advantage. in this case, Karatsev has played 50!!! less games than Novak, pretty much a full match less. The second major difference is that while Novak is hitting more aces (83 to 48 but in 23 more service games), producing less double faults (5 to 18), hitting more winners (238 to 193 - they have the exact same number of UFE’s weirdly enough), and holding serve a little more often (91% to 85%) the one area Karatsev is excelling is at breaking serve. Again, this could come down to the unique path Djokovic has traversed to get here but, he is ony breaking serve at 24% while Karatsev is breaking serve at a whopping, Djokovic/Nadal like level of 42%. That number is hard to put into context. It’s a lot. Any which way you look at it, Djoker has the better hard court stats, he has the better pedigree but it seems right now, he is not really blowing anyone away and Karatsev should be able to break serve about once a set to hopefully keep this close. The spread is +8 and Djokovic has only covered that in the first match of this tournament, against Chardy. I went back and looked at Djokovic’s semi-final performances here at the Aussie (it’s a decent sized sample considering how well he’s done here) and he is only 3-5 at covering this big of a spread. To be fair his quality of competition has been high (Fed four times, Sta once, Andy once) and it is also important to note, as I am sure it’s been mentioned everywhere, Djokovic has never actually lost a semi-final in Australia. One would guess that the stage might be too big for Karatsev but he has shown none of that so far. He has shown a tendency to be a bit of a slow starter, losing the first set to FAA and Grigor (badly too). I expect Karatsev to lose, probably in straights but to keep the sets close. I could see him losing the first set 63, especally if Novak serves first (u9.5 games is jucied to -188) and then keeping sets 2 and 3 close but ultimately losing.

Meds and Tsitsipas have played six times and it hasn’t usually gone that well for Tsitsipas. His lone win came at the 2019 Nitto finals when Meds was at the end of a five month bender of trophy collection. And even then it took a tiebreak in the first set. You can count me in the camp that thought having extra time off and missing a match would negatively affect Tsitsipas but, in reality it seems the energy saved came in handy as Rafa was the one who ran out of gas (that forehand from mid-court on the second last point of the match was maybe the most un-Rafa shot I’ve ever seen him make).
Tsitsipas has quietly been having a hell of a tournament, even if he didn’t really play anyone before Nadal. His stats are super impressive - he is holding serve a tournament best 95% of the time, he is breaking serve way above his normal levels on a hard court, up at 28%. Despite playing one fewer match he has almost generated as many break points as the rest of the semi-finalists. One concern for Tsitsipas is that his double fault number is high and you don’t want to be gving points away to Medvedev in the return game - Meds is right behind Karatsev at the top of the leaderboard when it comes to breaking serve at 39%. I’ve said it many times but when Meds gets rolling on the return game just about everybody on tour is in trouble. I think the first two sets of Rafa/Tsitty were about what I expected - Tsitsipas would have trouble getting into return games and Nadal would not. I expect a repeat of that on Friday morning. The only difference, most likely, is that Meds won’t run out of gas. Both their motivations should be high and both have been here before so, unless Karatsev pulls off a shocker and is the one waiting in the finals, I don’t expect there to be a lot of nerves. Meds is also holding serve at 91% and the gap between his hold/break numbers and Tsitty’s are basically all in the return game. I think Tsitsipas will eventually fold to the pressure - his win over Meds didn’t see Medvedev create a single break point; that is not happening again.

Picks:
Karatsev +8, -114, Pinny
Djokovic 3-0, -150, BOL
Djokovic/Karatsev 1st set u9,5, -188, Bet365

Medvedev -4, -102, Pinny