Novak Djokovic vs Juan Ignacio Londero US Open Picks 8/28/2019

Novak Djokovic vs Juan Ignacio Londero

10 am EST, 28th August 2019

New York, NY (USA)

Hard courts

Novak Djokovic is chasing another Grand Slam title in New York. 3rd this year and 17th of his entire career. The 16th title that he won a couple of months ago in Wimbledon was quite amazing. He was almost beat already. Federer was serving and had two championship points, to win his 21st career title. That one would almost certainly put him out of reach from his closest rivals when we're talking about the number of Grand Slam titles. But as proved many times before, Djokovic is a threat, no matter what the scoreboard is showing at that moment. He made a miraculous comeback and ripped the trophy right out of Federer's grasp.

He won 3 times in Flushing Meadows already, including last year. He started his title defense on Monday against Spaniard Roberto Carballes Baena. As expected, Novak had very little problems with the clay-court specialist. He won 77% of all the points behind his serve and offered no break chances to his opponent. On the other hand, he was constantly pressuring Baena's serve and managed to break it 4 times out of 11 tries.

Related: Get Expert ATP Picks for today's matches

In the second round, he will play Juan Ignacio Londero from Argentina. It's quite a surprise, considering the Argentine was a massive underdog in his first-round match vs Sam Querrey. But the big-serving American couldn't keep up with Londero's strong baseline play and had no choice but to admit that his opponent was the better player that day. The crucial thing for Juan Ignacio was making Querrey work for points in his own serving games. Despite 24 aces, Sam won only 62% of the points behind his serve and got broken 5 times. Meaning that whenever Londero managed to put the ball back in play, he was the favorite to win the point.

Looking at Juan Ignacio's scores on different surfaces will help you understand why this win was so surprising. He is only 2-4 on hard courts when we talk about ATP tournaments. But even on the lower levels of competition, his win percentage was not any better. On the Challenger Tour, he was 6-12 on a hard surface.

Matchup

Considering he didn't really play much on this level prior to 2019, Londero didn't have a chance to bump into guys like Novak Djokovic. This will be his first match against world No.1. He did play against Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros, where it didn't seem he got nervous on the big stage. He actually played well, but Rafa is just too good in Paris.

Novak on hard courts is also up there when it comes to meeting the best players in their favorite conditions. But if Londero sticks to his guns, I believe he can find some rhythm and win enough games not to embarrass himself. Novak was dealing with some foot and elbow issues lately, so he might be taking it easy in order not to make those injuries worse before some tougher challenges.

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Betting odds & prediction

Lines for this match are as lopsided as they can be. Djokovic is favored by 10 games and the total is sitting at 27. In my opinion, those numbers are bit inflated and are not giving any respect to Londero for proving that he can play in these conditions. In Cincinnati, he eliminated Berrettini, so you can't really say that beating Querrey was a fluke. To cover such a big spread, he only needs to win a couple of games per set and I'm sure he can do that.

Pick: Juan Ignacio Londero +10 (-108)

Read more articles by Guy Bruhn