Ben Shelton vs Roman Safiullin Prediction: Shelton will be closer to victory?

In the framework of the tournament in Brisbane Ben Shelton will fight with Russian Roman Safiullin. The guys have crossed each other twice before, the score of the confrontation is 1:1, and bookmakers give a slight advantage in the pairing to Ben, they believe that Shelton will be closer to victory.

After the triumph at the tournament in Tokyo, in the final of which Shelton beat Aslan Karatsev, the American played two matches at the tournaments in Vienna and Paris. In Austria Ben lost to Jannick Sinner 0:2, in France Shelton lost to Spaniard Davidovic Fokina in three sets. In general, the American has improved a lot over the last season, and according to the results of the season he entered the top-20 of the ATP rankings, and is currently ranked 17th in the peloton.

Last season was also a successful one for Roman, with a great performance at Wimbledon, for example, but Safiullin finished it in Paris at the Masters, where he reached the 1/8 finals, where he lost to his compatriot Karen Khachanov in three games. Roman starts the season as the 39th ranked player in the world, and there are reasons to believe that the progress in Roman's game will continue.

We believe that we are in for a long match, both head-to-head meetings between Shelton and Safiullin have been long before, so we should expect three sets in the upcoming game as well. As for the outcome, we believe in Safiullin, Roman finished last season more confident than the American, so our choice is in favor of the outsider.