Four years ago, Borna Coric was considered to be one of the up-and-coming talents in tennis. Although he had not really broken through at a Grand Slam, Coric cracked the top-15, had an ATP title to his name and had wins over Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal already under his belt.
Unfortunately things began to fall apart for Coric towards the end of 2019 as he injured his back. After the pandemic, the Croatian returned to play for a few months and then injured his shoulder, which led to him taking a year-long hiatus from March 2021 to March 2022.
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As you’d expect Coric’s first few months back after the hiatus were bumpy, but the 25-year-old seemed to find something over the summer, winning a Challenger event in Parma and only dropping one set along the way. Coric followed that up with an ugly loss to the World No. 311, but then made a run to the quarterfinals in Hamburg and now finds himself in the quarterfinals of a Masters 1000 event after defeating Lorenzo Musetti, Rafael Nadal, and Roberto Bautista-Agut.
Coric is a +188 underdog against Felix Auger-Aliassime on Friday night (approx. 7 p.m. ET).
Borna Coric serves.Getty ImagesAuger-Aliassime put together an impressive win over Jannik Sinner on Thursday night, coming back from two match points to defeat the Italian in three sets. FAA showed every bit of what makes him a phenomenal talent and a frustrating player to bet on in the match, as he was miles off it in the first set, but gathered himself and put together a dominant third set to get the victory.
With a dominant first serve and plenty of power from the baseline, Auger-Aliassime has the toolkit to make any player on tour look ordinary if he’s on his game. But far too often in his career — he is only 22, so there’s plenty of time for him to get better/more consistent — so far he’ll lose the plot and make some head-scratching mistakes. Coric’s first serve isn’t in the same stratosphere as Auger-Aliassime’s, but it has been clicking so far in Cincinnati, as he was only broken once in his past two matches.
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Auger-Aliassime has one of the best serves on tour, so you’d expect him to be able to rack up cheap points and quick games throughout the match and with Coric doing plenty of damage on his serve, we could see a tie-breaker or two in this quarterfinal match on Friday night.
The price on Coric isn’t high enough to be interesting, but getting plus-money on this match to go over 23.5 games is worth a play.
Borna Coric vs. Felix Auger-Aliassime pick
Over 23.5 games (+100 — FanDuel)
