They’ve reached the third-round stage at the Toronto Masters. Andy Schooler picks out his best bets for the last-32 matches.
Tennis betting tips: National Bank Open
1pt Lorenzo Sonego to beat Andrey Rublev at 11/5 (bet365, BetVictor)
1pt Christopher O’Connell (+5.5) to beat Alex de Minaur on the game handicap at 7/10 (William Hill, 888sport)
Andrey Rublev v Lorenzo Sonego
I reckon Sonego is an underdog with a decent chance – certainly better than the odds suggest.
I’ve written before about how I feel he’s often underrated on a faster surface and he showed what he’s capable of by making the Australian Open quarter-finals at the start of the year.
Admittedly, he’s struggled to back that up since but he cruised through his first match here and has beaten Rublev in two of their four previous meetings.
Rublev was also a comfortable winner the other day, albeit Hugo Gaston didn’t offer a great deal, but his post-match comments were notable.
He described the Har-Tru courts as “crazy, very fast”, adding it was “super hard to control the ball”. He also admitted he was “struggling a bit” in the heat and that he preferred it when this tournament was held in Montreal.
A look through his recent record shows he’s managed just one top-100 win since Roland Garros and none against the top 50. Sonego is currently 38thin the ranking list.
There was only one break of serve in their last meeting in Metz at the end of last season (Rublev did win that day) but I can see another tight contest here, one Sonego could nick at tasty odds.
Alex de Minaur v Christopher O'Connell
These two Australians have practised together plenty of times but never met on the match court.
It’s therefore tough to predict what will unfold – you often find one player will have found the other's weakness and know what tactics to employ.
Maybe that will mean De Minaur easing to victory; he’s the form player after all following Sunday’s title success in Washington.
However, when there’s such a price gap – O’Connell is out at 8/1 for the upset – I think it’s worth taking a chance that it’s the underdog who has picked up key information and will do better than expected.
O’Connell has put a disappointing run of form behind him in Toronto, crushing Chun-Hsin Tseng in the first round for the loss of just three games before taking out seed Stefanos Tsitsipas on Wednesday. The latter victory came despite a first-serve percentage of just 49%, his worst of the season. Expect that to return close his 2025 average of 60% here.
While I’m not going to back O’Connell to win this match, I do think he’s worth a try on the handicap where he gets a 5.5-game start.
A look at how he’s done against other elite players this season shows he took Tommy Paul to five sets at the Australian Open and also covered this handicap against Holger Rune at Queen’s Club recently. Admittedly, Jack Draper did post a big win over O’Connell but De Minaur does not have those sort of weapons.
Posted at 0855 BST on 31/07/25
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