Stefanos Tsitsipas faces Benoit Paire in the third round of the 2022 Australian Open on Saturday, January 22nd 2022.
Will Benoit Paire come out and cause yet another upset here, or will Stefanos Tsitsipas show us why he is one of the favorites for the title here in Australia?
Benoit Paire shocked us in the second round, beating Grigor Dimitrov in 4 tight sets. The match was very tight, with both players not having too much different between each other. However, the major difference which resulted in Benoit winning was Grigor’s poor first serve win %. Dimitrov was not at his best in that match it seems, and Benoit was very good on his first serve. It is always hard to know how Benoit will come out, but if he can do the same against Tsitsipas he will have a good time on court.
Stefanos Tsitsipas also came through a tight 4 set match, beating the up and coming Sebastian Baez. Tsitsipas was good on his first serve, winning 78% of first serve points and hitting 12 aces. However, off of his second serve, Tsitsipas struggled a lot and was only winning 50%. Tsitsipas is definitely still wearing off some rust, as he only converted 4 out of 18 break point chances, but I am sure that a Tsitsipas at 80% is still better than the vast majority of the ATP Tour.
This is going to be the 5th meeting between both players, with Stefanos having won 3 of their 4 prior encounters. They met 2 times last year, where Tsitsipas dominated the matches in straight sets. Although Benoit won his match against Dimitrov in strong fashion, Dimitrov was very poor on his serve. With Tsitsipas and his determination, I think that Benoit will get frustrated, and when he does, he will start to throw away the match as we usually see.