Alex de Minaur, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Belinda Bencic and Leylah Fernandez will be among those in action on day two of the 2025 United Cup which will be played on December 28. Here’s the preview, predictions and tips for these matches.
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Felix Auger-Aliassime v Borna Coric Preview
Head-to-Head: There have been three previous meetings between these two players at this level and Coric leads 2-1. Their most recent outing came in Cincinnati in 2022 where Coric won the quarterfinals in straight sets.
Auger-Aliassime would be quite disappointed with the kind of season he had in 2024. After winning his first four titles in 2022 and backing it up with a tournament win in Basel in 2023, the Canadian did not have much of a success in 2024.
On hardcourt surfaces, incidentally, Auger-Aliassime won just six matches all year and only twice did he win successive matches – at Cincinnati and Australian Open.
The only consolation for Auger-Aliassime is that his opponent in this match, Coric, had a similar issue in 2024. He had started the season ranked 37th in the world but quickly fell to 90th on the rankings charts.
And that was down to his own problems in hardcourt competitions which saw him win just eight matches spread across 13 tournaments.
As a result, we could see a tough encounter which goes right down to the wire.
Auger-Aliassime v Coric prediction: Over 21.5 games in the match
Alex de Minaur v Tomas Martin Etcheverry Preview
Head-to-Head: Their only previous meeting came at Roland Garros in 2023 and Tomas Martin Etcheverry had won that in straight sets.
While de Minaur might not have had the success he would have liked against his Argentine opponent in their only previous meeting, it must be quickly added that Etcheverry is a bit of a clay court specialist.
Despite being 39th in the world with a career-best ranking of 27th, one look at Etcheverry’s record points to this problem. Since 2019 when he won a few matches on hardcourt surface at the lower level, there hasn’t been a single season in which he has ended the year with a positive win-loss on this surface.
As opposed to that, de Minaur is a solid hardcourter and it’s been thanks to his consistent showings on this surface – as three successive fourth round appearances at the Australian Open and a quarterfinal at the US Open would testify – he has broken into the top 10 of the rankings.
Backing de Minaur for a straight-set win here.
de Minaur v Etcheverry prediction: de Minaur to win in straight sets
Leylah Fernandez v Donna Vekic Preview
Head-to-Head: There have been no previous meetings between Fernandez and Vekic
She is just 22 years old and has already seen a few ups and downs but the good news for Fernandez is she has managed to hold on to a world ranking of 31st in the world coming into the 2025 season.
The former US Open finalist had hit a peak of 13th at one point but fell away a tad after that. She ended the 2024 season on a solid note though, featuring in eight hardcourt competitions and reaching at least the third round in four of them (of which she progressed further in two more).
Vekic has done one better after finishing 19th in the world at the end of 2024. This is the same ranking she had at the end of the 2019 season following which fitness and form woes had seen her ranking plummet drastically.
While Vekic failed to win a title in 2024 – having won at Monterrey in 2023 – she did enough to reach the semifinals at Wimbledon and fourth round at US Open.
The Croat starts off a favourite here.
Fernandez v Vekic prediction: Vekic to win
Belinda Bencic v Chloe Paquet Preview
Head-to-Head: This will be the first meeting between Bencic and Paquet.
Having announced she was pregnant in November 2023, Bencic came back to feature on the tour in October 2024 to feature in a couple of ITF competitions.
She won her Billie Jean King Cup match before making it to the final of the Angers Open, a WTA 125 tournament held in December.
It won’t be easy to get back to her winning ways as quickly as this but her performance in that tournament in Angers saw her grab four successive wins without dropping a set before going down to Alycia Parks in a hard-fought three-setter.
Combine that with the fact that Paquet is much more proficient on clay with a 5-11 record on outdoor hardcourt matches in 2024, and we have a relatively easy decision to go with Bencic for this one.
Bencic v Paquet prediction: Bencic to win in straight sets
Other United Cup 2025 Predictions of the Day
- Ugo Humbert v Dominic Stricker: Humbert to win in straight sets
- Olivia Gadecki v Nadia Podoroska: Gadecki to win in three sets
- Maria Sakkari v Jessica Bouzas Maneiro: Sakkari to win in straight sets
- Stefanos Tsitsipas v Pablo Carreno Busta: Three sets in the match
