Andy Murray vs Roberto Bautista-Agut Prediction & Betting Tips - ATP Australian Open

Prediction published on 19/01/2023, 17:56  by Steve Ashfield | Modified on 21/01/2023 at 14:26 in Tennis Predictions

24th seeded Roberto Bautista Agut faces Andy Murray in the third round of the Australian Open. The winner will take on an unseeded American in the last 16, either Tommy Paul or Jenson Brooksby. Murray has two aims in this match. The first is to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time since the 2017 Wimbledon Championships. The other is to get to bed a bit earlier than he did when beating Thanasi Kokkinakis in the second round. Playing tennis at nearly 4am is something that shouldn't be happening. That was the second time that Murray has trailed and fought back to win. He had to win the last two sets to defeat 13th seed Matteo Berrettini and was two sets down to Kokkinakis. Whether he can recover from those marathon matches is the big question here. It's helping his world ranking and in the live list he's up to 61st and could get as high as 46th if winning this match. He's 3-3 in previous meetings with Agut but his wins all came between 2014 and 2016. The three matches played since have all been won by Agut including two last year. Both were on hard courts over three sets and Murray only won six games in those matches, including a match in Doha in which he won just one game.

Roberto Bautista Agut started this Australian Open ranked 25th but has climbed two places as a result of getting to the third round in Melbourne. He's not made it to the last 16 of a Grand Slam in his last five tournaments and has only twice got to the quarter finals. One of those was in the 2019 Australian Open and later that year at Wimbledon he reached his only Grand Slam semi-final. The Spaniard is bidding to get to the fourth round of this tournament for the fifth time. He played both the Adelaide International tournaments in the run up to these championships. He made the last 16 in the first and beat Andrey Rublev. The second saw him reach the final where lost to Kwon Soonwoo, beating Kokkinakis in the last four. In this tournament he's had a straight sets win over Joao Sousa and then had a five-set victory over qualifier Brendan Holt. He also had to come from two sets down but only dropped seven games in the final three sets and got to bed a lot earlier than Murray. This might be another close match but Agut looks the likely winner.