pick118

Not many people are aware of it, but there might not be a single player on either tour that is playing as well as Tallon Griekspoor right now. The world No. 62 enters Wednesday’s second-round match-up at the Australian Open with 21st-ranked Pablo Carreno-Busta on a ridiculous 29-match winning streak.

When looking at Griekspoor’s opponents throughout the course of this impressive stretch, there’s undoubtedly some lackluster names. The 25-year-old did, however, pick up two quality wins in Melbourne earlier this month, over Dominik Koepfer and Alexei Popyrin. A foot injury then forced him to withdraw from the tournament—his next opponent would have been Rafael Nadal. But ready to play in Melbourne again on Monday, Griekspoor dismantled world No. 32 Fabio Fognini on Monday, as he cruised to a 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 win in under two hours. Fognini clearly isn’t the player he once was, but it was huge to see that the high stakes of playing in a major didn’t shake Griekspoor’s confidence.

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Carreno Busta will be, by far, the best player that Griekspoor has faced since September, which is when his remarkable run began. (It started after a loss to Novak Djokovic at the US Open.) The Spaniard was similarly dominant in his first-round match, coming away with a 6-1, 6-2, 7-6 (2) win over Tomas Martin Etcheverry in only two hours and eight minutes. The 30-year-old also got in some quality performances at the ATP Cup a few weeks back, going 4-1 at the event.

Considering how solid Carreno Busta is in all facets of the game, this is going to be hard hill for Griekspoor to climb. But Griekspoor is playing far too well right now not to get himself on the scoreboard with at least one set. He just hasn’t been making many mistakes along this journey he’s been on over the last few months, and that means something, even against lesser competition. Meanwhile, the solid Spaniard should win at least one set in this match.

Without having a clear lean on which player to back here, it’s best to just look to the total and take the Over. There should be a lot of games played in this match, and you’ll be happy to have jumped on this one if more than three sets are played. It’s very unlikely that this will go Under this number if both of these players win a set, which we're confident in.

The Pick: Over 36.5 Games (-125)