Gael Monfils vs Matteo Berrettini: Will Monfils take revenge for defeats in New York and Sydney?

Gael Monfils, now in the best form of the last few seasons, has a good opportunity to avenge Berrettini for his two defeats in 2019 and 2021. Let's see if the Frenchman can seize the chance.

Technically, Monfils has one defeat in 2022 at the Adelaide tournament. But the match against Monteiro was not completed. Monfils withdrew early in the deciding set, citing an injury. Before that, the Frenchman won the tournament here, and in Melbourne, Gael has not lost a single set so far, knocking out Coria, Bublik, Garin and Kecmanovic. Quite a championship move. Note that Monfils hasn't had any really strong opponents in Melbourne yet. Berrettini will be the first.

Berrettini reached the fifth round of the Australian Open for the first time, while Monfils had already played at this level in 2016. The Italian also had a fairly easy set. Still, Berrettini, unlike the Frenchman, had already managed to lose four sets in Melbourne: one each to Nakashima and Kozlov, two to Alcaraz Garfia. But Matteo passed Carreño-Busta in three sets, the match lasted two hours and 24 minutes, and the guys played a tie-break in the second game, which was decisive. Berrettini spent much more time on the court than Monfils, which can have a negative impact on the Italian in the second week of the tournament.

On the plus side, Berrettini has beaten Monfils twice in the tour. But that factor didn't help Cilic in his match against Auger-Aliassime. And Monfils was seldom very fit in recent years. And now the Frenchman is clearly on the mark. On the plus side for Monfils is that he has spent much less time on the court in Melbourne than Berrettini. We think the lineup for this match should be about even, but we see an obvious bias favouring the Italian. We will play against the line in this pairing, betting on Gael Monfils: W1 for 2.50, Handicap 1 (3.5) for 1.81.