Bet sheet archive · 04 September 2026
04 September 2026: 5 bets staked, settled 1W-4L. Every entry below was published before its match started.
Carlos Alcaraz is only three matches into his return from the wrist injury that kept him out since April, and two separate reports this week say his serve is still not back to full speed. He also spent four sets and 33 games on court yesterday and turns around on a single day's rest, while Yibing Wu has had two days off, is three matches deep at Flushing Meadows and has been holding serve almost at will. We still expect Alcaraz to win, and we are not backing Wu to do so. But a seven-and-a-half game head start looks generous in a match the sharpest books themselves price to run long, so the bet is Wu with the handicap.
C. Alcaraz won 3 - 0
Kostyuk is the rightful favourite here and we expect her to win the match. But the price has her as a far bigger favourite than her hard-court rating on its own supports, and the games handicap has been stretched along with it. Alexandrova beat her the one time they met on a hard court, and our margin model, corrected for its measured tendency to under-rate underdogs against the spread, has her staying within four and a half games much more often than this price implies. So we are taking the Alexandrova handicap rather than backing her to win outright.
M. Kostyuk won 2 - 0
Pegula is the deserved favourite here and we agree with the market on that, so there is nothing to back at 1.17. The question is the margin, and everything points to a tighter match than a five-and-a-half game line implies. Their four previous hard-court meetings ran 16, 28, 38 and 22 games, Pegula's long-standing weakness is converting break points against opponents who save them well, and Fernandez's defensive game and movement are built for this kind of baseline grind. We are taking Fernandez plus five and a half games at 1.83.
J. Pegula won 2 - 1
We are backing Daniel Merida Aguilar with a 2.5-game head start at 1.96 rather than backing him to win outright. Both men arrive playing their best tennis of the year: Michelsen took out Brandon Nakashima in straight sets and Merida knocked out Andrey Rublev in four, and every one of our rating methods makes this match closer than the price suggests. Two men holding serve this well on a hard court usually means tight sets and tiebreaks, which is exactly the environment where a small head start survives. Merida does not have to win the match, only stay within a couple of games.
A. Michelsen won 3 - 0
We are backing Alexander Bublik to beat Tommy Paul at 2.51 with Pinnacle, staked small. Bublik has been the sharper of the two in New York so far, dropping only 23 games in a straight-sets win over Adrian Mannarino, while Paul has needed four sets and more than eight hours on court to get through his first two rounds. The stake stays small because Bublik arrived at the tournament without a single hard-court warm-up match, and Paul has won four of their five career meetings.
T. Paul won 3 - 2
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