The Pick, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook: Holger Rune vs. Novak Djokovic, Paris Masters final

The final of the Rolex Paris Masters will feature 19-year-old Holger Rune, the world No. 18, taking on 21-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, who is currently No. 7 in the rankings. Rune has been an absolute buzzsaw all week long, getting by three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka, world No. 10 Hubert Hurkacz, world No. 9 Andrey Rublev, world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz and world No. 8 Felix Auger-Aliassime before reaching this point. In the words of the WWE’s Sheamus, that’s “banger, after banger, after banger.”

Auger-Aliassime had won three ATP Tour events in a row heading to Paris, and he beat Rune in straight sets in the final of the most recent one, in Basel. It has been stunning watching Rune grow up and rapidly improve in recent months, and seeing him get revenge over the Canadian in a straight-set win on Saturday was really something. But Rune won’t have much time to rest on his laurels now. The Dane will need to be locked in and ready to go when he faces one of the greatest players in the history of the sport on Sunday. And while we’re not sure the youngster has what it takes to knock Djokovic off just yet, we do think he’ll go down swinging here.

Rune is a player that is extremely aggressive from the baseline and just doesn’t have any glaring holes in his game right now. He also glides around the court rather effortlessly, which allows him to play sound defense when facing powerful opponents. On top of that, Rune is rock-solid at the net and his serve has been tremendous this season. There’s a reason he is mentioned in the same conversation as Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. With that said, Djokovic won’t exactly be able to pick on Rune anywhere, if the teenager is playing well.

The Serbian’s best chance of blowing the Dane off the court would be if the moment is simply too big for Rune. It isn’t out of the question that he’d get a bit flustered seeing somebody as intimidating as Djokovic on the other side of the net. But we’re betting on Rune coming out firing, as he has a good team around him—which includes Patrick Mouratoglou—and has seemingly calmed down quite a bit this year. Rune used to be known for some interesting on-court blowups, but we’ve seen less and less of those—which is why it was actually a little tough to see Wawrinka chastising him after their meeting in this event.

Djokovic is clicking on all cylinders heading into this final, and he has every reason to want to capture all the hardware that he can the rest of the year after having been denied the chance to play in multiple majors. But it’s hard to ask Djokovic to go out there and do more than just win 6-4, 6-4 against one of the hottest players in the world. That’s why we’re taking the 19-year-old on the game spread. We trust him to keep this somewhat close.

The Pick: Rune +4.5 Games (-135)