Our Amanda Anisimova vs Anastasia Potapova prediction for Friday's US Open second rounder starts with a clear read: Anisimova is the better player right now, and it is not particularly close. The two meet at 11:00 AM ET on September 5, and the market has Anisimova at minus 455, which tells you the book agrees.
T Money's fundamentals process landed on Anisimova too. The catch is that this one grades out as a PASS on our official card. That is not a knock on the pick itself. It just means the price does not leave room for a bet worth making, so no stake goes on the board here.
Why T Money likes Anisimova
Anisimova has been the sharper player through two rounds on this hard court. She opened with a 6 1, 6 3 win over No. 62 Ashlyn Krueger in 72 minutes, winning 65.6% of first serve points and closing at 58.7% of total points. She followed that by beating Top 50 titlist Lilli Tagger 6 3, 3 6, 6 1, taking 76.4% of first serve points and out hitting Tagger 30 winners to 15 with an equal number of unforced errors.
That second result matters more than the raw score suggests, since Tagger is meaningfully better competition than Potapova has faced so far. Anisimova's longer form also backs it up: she carries a 7 2 record over her last month and a 29 11 mark against comparable hard court opposition this season.
The return numbers seal it. Anisimova is winning 74% of her service games this event, and against mid tier servers specifically she is 12 3 with a 77% hold rate and a 41% break rate. Potapova's equivalent split is 4 4 with 59% holds and 35% breaks. That gap on return is the single clearest edge in this match.
The case against
Potapova is not without a route here. Her return game has been a real weapon this tournament, sitting at a 40% return points won baseline, and her path to an upset runs through Anisimova's second serve. Anisimova gave some of that up against Tagger, winning just 37.9% of second serve points in that match, and if Potapova can turn that isolated dip into a full match pattern, this gets uncomfortable fast.
Potapova has also shown she can produce a big hard court result, with a past win over Mboko standing as her best evidence that the ceiling exists. But her current draw has been considerably softer, a straight sets win over a lucky loser followed by a shakier three set win over a wild card in which she hit nine double faults and won only 51.6% of total points. That is a mixed quality performance, not a form spike.
The two have played once before, back in May 2019 on clay in Rome qualifying, which Anisimova won. It is more than seven years old and came on a different surface, so it barely registers here. Today's read has to come from what both players have done on hard courts this US Open, not from that old meeting.
The number that matters
Here is where the pick and the bet split. Everything above points to Anisimova, and T Money's process has her clearly favored. But at minus 455, there is essentially no cushion left in that price. A book that short is already pricing in most of the edge we can measure, and paying that much to win a small amount is not how this card stays disciplined over the long run.
That is the whole story behind the PASS tag. It is not a signal that the pick is shaky. It is a statement that the number does not clear the bar this card uses before it turns a read into a bet. Anisimova should win. She is just too expensive to back here.
The verdict
Call: Anisimova is the right side on the fundamentals, backed by cleaner serve numbers, a better return game, and tougher wins already on her resume this event. This is a PASS on the official card, not a bet, because minus 455 leaves nothing worth staking. Watch the second serve numbers if you're tracking this one live: that's the one lever that could get Potapova back into it.