Jan Choinski vs Botic Van De Zandschulp is a US Open first-rounder on paper and a serve-versus-return math problem underneath. T Money's numbers point clearly at Van De Zandschulp, and the reasoning holds up match by match. The price does not. At -333, this is an official PASS on our card: no play, no side, even though the model likes one.
First pitch is 12:30 PM ET on Tuesday, September 2. Here is the case T Money built, and why the number that actually matters killed the bet before it started.
Why T Money likes Zandschulp
Van De Zandschulp's Winston-Salem run in late August is the clearest recent evidence. He beat No. 20 Luciano Darderi 6-1 6-0, hitting 12 aces and winning 86% of his first-serve points, a result T Money's audit flags as earned rather than a product of a weak opponent day. A round earlier he handled Adolfo Daniel Vallejo 6-2 6-0, though that one comes with an asterisk: Vallejo landed under 45% of his first serves and doubled seven times, so some of that scoreline belongs to the opponent's bad day, not Van De Zandschulp's level.
Stack the wins together and his weighted line is 58% first serves in, 81% of first-serve points won, 57% of second-serve points won, and 10 of 14 break chances converted. That is a player putting return pressure on second serves, which is exactly Choinski's soft spot. Zoom out to the last 12 months and the hard-court split holds: Van De Zandschulp is 83% on serve holds and wins 18% of his return games against a tougher average schedule, against Choinski's 81% hold and 15% return games won on a lighter one.
The case against, and why it's not disqualifying
Van De Zandschulp's Winston-Salem week did not end well. He lost the quarterfinal to eventual semifinalist Benjamin Bonzi in a tight 6-7(5) 4-6, and the box score shows the exact leak T Money keeps flagging: 42% of second-serve points won and six double faults, with Bonzi taking 13 break chances off him and winning the total points battle 89-80. That is the same crack Choinski would need to open to force this into tiebreaks.
Choinski's own résumé is thin but not alarming. His Winston-Salem exit was a near-even 5-7 6-2 4-6 loss to qualifier Mees Rottgering, who then beat No. 58 Tomas Machac the next round, so the level Choinski lost to was real. Choinski still put up nine double faults and converted just 3 of 12 break chances in that match, which is the pattern T Money keeps seeing from him: he can hang in rallies and force long service games, but he leaks the same free points on his own racket that Van De Zandschulp gave away against Bonzi. The head-to-head does not help settle it either way. The two played once, a 6-1 6-0 Van De Zandschulp win on clay in July 2025, but that is a different surface roughly 14 months old, and Choinski has since improved, so T Money treats it as background noise, not a blueprint for Tuesday's hard court.
The number that matters
The market has Van De Zandschulp at -333. That means laying more than three dollars to win one, and it sits well past T Money's price ceiling for a playable favorite, which caps out at -170. Once a price crosses that line, it does not matter how much the model likes the side. There is no number that makes the return small enough to justify the risk, so the card grades this PASS on price alone, not on doubt about the pick itself.
Workload is a minor tiebreaker in Van De Zandschulp's favor if this does go long. He played 4 hours and 24 minutes across three straight days in Winston-Salem and still has five full rest days built in, while Choinski's one match took 130 minutes and he has had eight days off. Neither number is decisive on its own, but a fresher Van De Zandschulp lines up with the second-serve-pressure path T Money has him on for five sets.
The verdict
T Money's read favors Botic Van De Zandschulp on the fundamentals: better second-serve numbers, a cleaner recent hard-court sample, and a return game built to punish exactly what Choinski leaks. But this is a PASS, not a play. At -333, the price asks for far more than the edge is worth, and T Money does not stretch a good read into a bad number. No side is going on the official card here.