Frances Tiafoe vs Yi Zhou Prediction & Betting Tips - ATP Shanghai Masters

Prediction published on 05/10/2024, 15:08  by Steve Ashfield | Modified on 05/10/2024 at 16:08 in ATP Shanghai Masters Predictions

Wild card Yi Zhou faces a tough task in round two of the Shanghai Masters. He faces the 13th seed Frances Tiafoe for a place in the last 32 of this hard court Masters event. Here's our match prediction.

Frances Tiafoe is the world number 17 but is up two places in the live rankings. In the ATP Live Race, the American is 14th but nearly 900 points behind the final qualifying place for the end-of-season Tour Finals.

Tiafoe has lost his last two matches so will want to get back into winning ways in Shanghai. He was beaten by Alexander Zverev in the Laver Cup and then Brandon Nakashima in his first match in the Japan Open.

Before that he was in great form on the American hard court tour. He reached the semi-finals in Washington, got to the final of the Cincinnati Masters and the last four of the US Open. A win  here will take him into the third round of the Shanghai Masters for the first time.

Yi Zhou is down at 440th in the latest rankings though that is his career-high. The 19-year-old Chinese player took on Yoshihito Nishioka in round one and was 4-2 down in the first set when his opponent retired with an injury.

He has lost six of his last eight matches and both his wins came via his opponent retiring. A set has been taken off both Pavel Kotov and Adrian Mannarino in his last two tournaments so he could make life difficult for Tiafoe. Zhou has had success on the M25 tour with two titles won on hard courts and another final reached. We go for over 19.5 games to be played.