Daily Tennis Tips – Wednesday 28th May

See below for our expert daily tennis tips and best bets around the courts for Wednesday May 28, 2025!

After conquering a long-running Roland Garros bogey in the first round, French Open 25th seed Alexei Popyrin takes on Chilean clay specialist Alejandro Tabilo.

Former junior French Open champ Popyrin had won just won previous match at the senior tournament – on debut in 2019 – but progressed past Yoshihito Nishioka (7-5 6-4 1-2 ret) on Monday.

Popyrin has produced some of his better 2025 form on this clay swing, including a quarter-final run in Monte-Carlo that featured an upset of Casper Ruud.

World No.61 Tabilo survived a five-setter against Frenchman Arthur Cazaux in the first round. In the top 20 last July, the 27-year-old had not played since reaching the last 16 in Monte-Carlo, where he beat modern greats Stan Wawrinka and Novak Djokovic.

It was only Tabilo’s second match at a French Open, but he boasts two ATP finals on clay and reached the semis in Rome in 2024. He’s coming off a tough match on the back of a long break, however, and Popyrin should be too good with the French Open monkey off his back.

French Open seventh seed Casper Ruud faces a potential second-round banana skin in the shape of Portugal’s Nuno Borges.

Ruud, who claimed a tremendous Madrid Masters victory before making to the Rome Masters quarters where he ran into Jannik Sinner, was the French Open runner-up in 2022-23. He breezed past Albert Ramos-Vinolas in the first round 6-3 6-4 6-2 in a strong opening statement.

World No.41 Borges had to fight from two sets down to beat qualifier and French Open debutant Kyrian Jacquet 3-6 6-7 6-4 6-3 6-3.

Borges hasn’t had the best clay swing, but he rolled Holger Rune at the Monte-Carlo Masters and Alex Michelsen last week in Geneva. He defeated Rafael Nadal at last year’s Swedish Open to claim a maiden ATP trophy.

Their only previous clash was in the 2024 Los Cabos Open quarter-finals, which Ruud won 6-3 6-2. Borges is capable of keeping this tight, but Ruud still looks solid value to wrap up it in straight sets.

After accounting for a highly-touted compatriot in the first round, Australian veteran Ajla Tomljanovic starts as a $6 outsider in the French Open’s Round of 64 against 2024 finalist Jasmine Paolini.

Tomljanovic thrashed boom teenager Maya Joint 6-1 6-3 on Monday, with a strong second serve proving crucial.

The world No.71 is now looking for her first third-round appearance at Roland Garros since her first foray in 2014.

World No.4 Paolini signalled her intentions by storming to the Rome Masters title two weeks ago – beating Coco Gauff in the final – but had more trouble than expected in the first round with Yue Yuan, eventually prevailing 6-1 4-6 6-3.

Tomljanovic hasn’t claimed a top-10 scalp since 2022, but Paolini can’t afford to take the 31-year-old lightly if she reproduces the performance that obliterated Joint.

A high-profile showdown awaits in French Open’s second round with four-time champion Iga Swiatek taking on US Open winner Emma Raducanu.

But Swiatek is a dominant 4-0 against Raducanu, racking up wins at the 2022 and ’24 Stuttgart Open, the 2023 Indian Wells Masters and the 2025 Australian Open – the latter a 6-1 6-0 rout – without dropping a set.

The Roland Garros champion for the past three years, Swiatek arrived in Paris under a bit of pressure after a title-less clay swing build-up – culminating  in a shock Round of 26 loss to Danielle Collins in Rome.

But the second seed was untroubled in the first round by Rebecca Sramkova in the first round, winning 6-3 6-3.

Injury-prone world No.41 Raducanu showed some lead-in promise by reaching the last 16 in Rome and beating Daria Kasatkina in Strasbourg before losing a three-setter to Danielle Collins. The Brit battled past Xinyu Wang 7-5 6-4 6-3 in the first round here on Monday.

Unsurprisingly, Swiatek is getting a massive start here as a $1.10 favourite. Raducanu can make it competitive, but a straight-sets defeat to the Queen of Clay awaits.