Australian Open Best Bets, Day 2: Value in a Jen Brady upset of Halep

All figures from DraftKings Sportsbook.

It feels like Sharapova’s name carries a little more weight than it should these days. She hasn’t fully recovered from her shoulder injury, and her only impressive win over the last six months was against Alison Riske in Cincinnati. Sharapova has won just a single match since Wimbledon. Vekic, on the contrary, is in fine form, having taken out Maria Sakkari and Anastasija Sevastova in Adelaide. Her trending UTR rates her 23 spots higher than Sharapova, and when a $10 bet pays you nearly $18, it’s absolutely worth a flier.

For the most part, handicappers are shockingly accurate. If you don’t have a strong feeling one way or another, it’s best to just let it go. This betting line, however, seems off. Not only does Bedene outrank Duckworth by 42 spots, his trending UTR is 50 spots higher. Duckworth has beaten Bedene before, but that was nearly seven years ago, on hard courts in Bogota. Duckworth will have the home crowd behind him, but that’s not enough to tilt the scales in his favor. All the metrics point to a Bedene win here, and at -152, a $10 bet will pay almost $17. This bet feels rock solid.

Brady is here to stay. A phenomenal athlete with a punishing forehand, the 24-year-old American is poised to hang out around the world’s Top 50 for the foreseeable future. She’s coming off a career win over world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty in Brisbane, and should have all the confidence in the world entering her first-round matchup against Simona Halep, who is just 4-6 in her last ten matches. Brady’s ranking won’t match Halep’s for some time, but her trending UTR has already surpassed the two-time Slam champion. This would be a serious upset, so dial back your wager if you want, but at +215, there is tremendous value in the American.