No photo?

Between a Diallo who’s been sloppy since the start of the season and a Shelton who’s professional but just coming back from injury, what do we do?

For me it’s simple here: if Shelton has healed his knocks and he’s motivated, he wins this match 9 times out of 10. There’s nothing official about an injury for the American, but I found the end of the Australian Open tough for him, and he added a few straps to his thigh. Very bad first set against Ruud, then a performance not as good as before against Sinner. He’s a big-tournament player, he’ll obviously prioritize the two Masters 1000 in March to hit his peak form/motivation. Last year, he lost to Munar here in R2 after losing in 3 sets as well against Sinner at the AO. I’m really questioning how committed he’ll be here, so I’m already ruling out his ML at 1.24.

On the Canadian side, it’s not the same. Even if Diallo really screwed things up at the start of the season in my opinion, he might want to make up for it in the smaller tournaments. I watched the highlights of his two Davis Cup matches. Both ended 7/6 in the final set, with one win and one loss against the world No. 241 and No. 297. Not very reassuring, is it? And that was in Vancouver on indoor hard! Well, Davis Cup matches are special, and Gabriel did manage to get his act together when it mattered. So I think that can help him fix his inaccuracies and give him solid motivation to play Shelton in Dallas in an ATP 500 two days after his team’s qualification. I’m not sure he can keep a high level for a whole match, but over one set, I’m fairly confident and I’d look for a bet along those lines.