Alex de Minaur vs Learner Tien Prediction, Odds, Best Bets - Vienna 500
Alex de Minaur and Learner Tien meet for the first time in Vienna on Wednesday, and the market cannot split them. De Minaur came from a set and a break down to win in three sets on Monday; Tien was off court in 87 minutes.
The Matchup
Wednesday's second round at Wiener Stadthalle brings a first meeting: Alex de Minaur and Learner Tien have never played a tour match. De Minaur is the world No. 10 and the No. 5 seed at the Erste Bank Open, 38-19 in played matches this season. Tien is the world No. 18 and 31-18 this season.
Both men won on Monday, and the wins said plenty. De Minaur lost the first set 6-1 to Tomas Machac and trailed by a break in the second before turning the match around to win 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 in just over two hours. Tien beat Luca Van Assche 6-3, 6-1 in 87 minutes and saved all five break points he faced. One man was stress-tested for two hours. The other was barely extended.
Key Factors
De Minaur is 7-3 across his last 10 matches, all on hard courts, a run that includes a Beijing final and a Shanghai quarterfinal. Tien is 6-4 across his last 10, also all on hard, and his indoor game travels better than his ranking: his tour-level indoor record stands at 16-7 after Monday's win.
De Minaur's body is the honest unknown here. He retired from the Beijing final on October 6 with a problem he then carried into Shanghai, and no report has named the injury. He took the week after Shanghai off, said before Vienna that the rest was what his body needed, and declared himself ready to go. Monday was the test, and he passed it: three sets and just over two hours with no sign of the problem returning. He is active and playing. The question is what a second long match in three days asks of him.
What beats this pick is Tien playing the match he played on Monday: serving clean, taking the ball early, and keeping the points short enough that de Minaur's return never gets to lean on him. Tien is the fresher man by a distance. But de Minaur wins matches by making opponents hit one more ball than they want to hit, and across a full match that pressure has broken down stronger fields than this one all fall.
This is their first meeting, and it is priced like a coin flip mostly because of what Monday asked of de Minaur. He answered it: three sets from a set and a break down, and the body that failed him in Beijing held up. Tien is fresher, and his serve will win him cheap points. Over a full match, though, de Minaur's return forces one more ball again and again, and that pressure has broken down better players than Tien this fall. Take Alex de Minaur ML at -108.
Game information
| DATE | Wednesday (10/28) |
|---|---|
| START TIME | 3:00 PM ET |
| COURT | Centre Court |
| VENUE | Wiener Stadthalle, Vienna |
| EVENT | Erste Bank Open |
| ROUND | Round 2 |
| SURFACE | Indoor hard |
| SPREAD | de Minaur -0.5 games (+100) |
| SET HANDICAP | de Minaur -1.5 sets (+208) |
| TOTAL | 22.5 (Over -105) |
| MONEYLINE | Alex de Minaur -108 / Learner Tien -104 |
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