Tennis Prediction Brandon Shelton vs Alex Michelsen: US Open

US Open 🇺🇸

• Alex Michelsen is advancing quietly in NYC and yet he has the cleanest record: 9 sets played, 0 lost, 84 games in 3 rounds. Federico Coria 6-4 6-1 6-0, Brandon Nakashima 6-3 6-4 6-4, Daniel Merida 7-6 6-4 6-3.

• And Daniel Merida, that's a rematch. He had beaten him in Montreal on August 7th. Michelsen responded with 76% of points won behind his 1st serve and 1 double fault in the entire match.

• Since June, he has only lost 3 matches on hard courts: 2 against Taylor Fritz, 1 against this Merida. On the season, he is at 20 wins for 10 losses on the surface on the main tour.

• On the other side, Tomas Martin Etcheverry deserves respect: 1 set dropped in 3 rounds, and Mariano Navone, Djokovic's conqueror, dismissed 6-4 6-4 6-3.

• I had actually proposed him yesterday in the PASS. But he is discovering the second week in New York, and Michelsen has been doing the same thing as him since the start of the tournament, with one less set and a 17th-ranked player on the list.

• I clearly expect Michelsen to make the difference here, he is at home and has a great opportunity to reach the quarterfinals in NYC, I see him capable of outplaying the Argentinian tactically.

• On the other side, Ben Shelton, is in the round of 16 here for the first time since his 2023 semifinal, and he's getting there with a full summer: 17 wins for 4 losses since June, the title in Stuttgart, then the Montreal Masters 1000 without dropping a set.

• It's his 4th title of the season, after Dallas and Munich.

• What bothers me here is that Shelton needed four sets in each of his 3 matches here, 126 games in total, more than any of the 4 players in these 2 matches.

• And Stefanos Tsitsipas won their only duel, in Cincinnati in 2023, 7-6 7-6. This match will feel the tiebreak: Shelton has played in 10 of his 21 matches since June, Tsitsipas in 10 out of 19.

• But this 2023 duel, Shelton played it at 20 years old. The one on Sunday, he plays it as world No. 9, with 4 titles in the year and 14 aces fired at Denis Shapovalov on Friday night.

• And I remain convinced that Stefanos is not comfortable in this matchup, Shelton is an explosive player, increasingly solid on the backhand, increasingly patient in the rallies, I see him cracking under the American's onslaught.