Alexei Popyrin vs Thiago Agustin Tirante prediction — the Three Pundits debate (ATP Canadian Open)

Forget the ranking. This is the guy who won this tournament, and he's won eleven of his last twelve matches on this court — seven of them against top-twenty players. Some players just love a place. He loves this one. And he's arrived fresh. His qualifier ended early when Kokkinakis pulled up hurt, then he handled Collignon in straight sets on his birthday.

You're selling me a man ranked outside the top hundred who lost five main-draw matches in a row before this week. That's not a narrative, that's a warning. If the Montreal thing is a coincidence, we're backing a guy who's been bad everywhere else for a year. But the other side is worse. Tirante is a clay player who beat Fritz on the day of his life — he lost one point behind his first serve all match. Nobody does that twice.

The thing that decides this is surface, not form. Tirante has won about three in four of his clay matches this year and barely more than half of his hard ones — he's a clay player, and this is a fast court. The Fritz win was real but it was built on a serving day he won't have again. Against that you've got a man who has been beating top-twenty players on this specific court for three years and has spent almost no time on court getting here. The game handicaps here are set lines dressed up as games, so they're no use to us, and the games total is priced right. It's the outright or nothing. I make Popyrin about a 62% shot and Caesars are paying 1.80.

Popyrin in two, and he'll serve Tirante off the court doing it.

Popyrin, and it goes three.