Tennis Prediction Brandon Nakashima vs Ben Shelton: Montreal

🇨🇦 Montreal

• First, Nakashima – Darderi, these two have crossed paths exactly 2 times, once on clay and once on hard. Each one won at home. Luciano Darderi prevailed in Hamburg on clay, Brandon Nakashima settled the matter in Vienna on hard, 6-2 7-5, without trembling.
• Darderi is a clay court player by training and results: 22 wins for 11 losses on clay this season, 7 for 5 on hard. The gap between what he's worth on clay and what he's worth on cement is the widest of all the players still in the running this week.
• The American, on the other hand, lives on this surface. His North American summer is the best sequence of his season: Jakub Mensik then Alex de Minaur knocked out one after the other in Washington, and here a 6-2 6-1 on Daniel Altmaier with 92% of points won behind his first serve.
• Now my reservations, and they are real. At 1.44, I'm not selling you any value: the market has already paid everything, and I'll say it frankly. Nakashima arrives with 82 games in his legs including a 37-game war against Rinderknech.

And the Montreal courts are the slowest of the season, which is exactly the terrain where a clay courter makes his game travel.

• Except that to get there, the Italian had to overturn Shang and Borges, twice in 3 sets, twice after losing the 1st set. He hasn't yet faced a serve of this caliber in this tournament, and tonight he won't have 3 sets to adjust.
• On the other side, Ben Shelton has played 11 matches in this tournament since 2024. He's won 10 of them, including the 6 from last summer (on the Toronto side) that gave him the biggest title of his career. There are players who have an annual appointment, and the American has his.

• His fortnight doesn't say otherwise: Brooksby, then Zizou Bergs swept 6-3 6-2 with 87% of points won behind his first serve and not a single double fault, then Joao Fonseca sent back in two sets. No set lost since the start of the tournament.

• And the market is shifting before our eyes. Pinnacle continues to buy the American from 1.91 to 1.72 over the last 24 hours. That's the whole point of the ticket: Shelton is good indeed, but the sharps also trust him.

• Beware, however, it won't be easy against the Czech's profile: Jakub Mensik leads their head-to-head 2 wins to 1, he won the only hard court duel that counts, in Auckland, in three sets. The Czech is 20 years old, 19 wins for 7 losses on the surface this season, and 13 aces on Monday night.

• Another nuance, and it's important: the title Shelton is defending, he won it in Toronto, not here. The tournament changes city every year, and the Montreal courts are the slowest of the season.

• Except that he has already answered the question on these courts, three times in one week. Bergs dispatched, Fonseca dominated. The adaptation is not a bet, it is done, I expect