Daily match picks

Garbine Muguruza (1.61) v Petra Kvitova (2.6)

Due to start at 3pm.

Kvitova leads their previous matches 4-1. They last met in the Doha final in 2018. Kvitova won that one in 3 sets. She has won all 3 of their hard court matches. Muguruza won indoors at the year end finals in Singapore in 2015.

Overall win percentages on all surfaces are strong for both players but favour Muguruza. She has won 37 of her last 50. Kvitova won 33 of her last 50. Muguruza also has slightly better results in the last 12 months. Both players have excellent hard court results. Muguruza has the smallest of edges and has won 1 more match in her last 50.

Muguruza has dropped just 1 set this week. That was against defending champion Aryna Sabalenka in the second round. Maria Sakkari was beaten easily in the quarter final and Victoria Azarenka withdrew from the semi final. She reached the quarter finals last season.

Kvitova has had to work a bit harder for her place in the final. She has dropped just 1 set which was to Anett Kontaveit in the quarter final. She dominated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the first round. In the semi final Jessica Pegula kept the sets tight and broke Kvitova’s serve 4 times.

Stats for the tournament favour Kvitova for everything except service holds. Muguruza leads that stat 79% v 74%. There is value on Kvitova and this has a great chance of going to a deciding set.

Lay Muguruza around 1.40 and remove some or all of your liability at 1.80. Lay the winner of the first set.

Update: We got our lay price in the third game of the match but Kvitova held serve. She was the first to break and took a 4-2 lead. She won the set with a double break. In set 2 Kvitova was broken in the first game but Muguruza could not hold serve. In fact Muguruza didn’t hold serve once in the second set.
Kvitova won 6-2, 6-1.

I have had a handful of questions in the last few months asking about the advice that I give on this blog and also on Twitter. The most common question is asking if the tips are intended to be backed and left to run. The short answer is “NO”. The slightly longer answer is “HELL NO”. The long answer is that I very rarely leave a back bet to run until the end of the match. I can think of just 2 occasions in the last year. The clue is in the title of the site. The tips are for TRADING.

The aim of the match picks on here and in the Daily Trading Tips emails is to give you a value entry point. After that you need to manage your position. If you have little tennis trading experience here are some simple ways to manage the trade:

Once the price has reached the target price and you have entered your first trade you are waiting for a significant price move in your favour. This can be a break of serve or your player wins the set. Then you should remove some or all of your liability (risk).

If your player does not perform well and gets broken after you have entered the trade then you can exit with a loss.

 

The Final

Swiatek (1.39) v Bencic (3.4)

Due to start at 7:30 am

This will be the first time they have played.

The overall win percentages are strong for both players but favour Swiatek. Their hard court results are pretty even.

Swiatek reached the third round at the US Open and fourth round at the Australian Open. She has had a fairly comfortable route to the final. Danielle Collins in the quarter final retired in the second set and Jil Teichmann put up little resistance in the semi final.

Bencic reached the third round of the Australian Open in the last 2 seasons. She didn’t play at the US Open last year. She was not tested in her first 2 matches this week. She had a battle with Cori Gauff in the semi finals. In sets 1 and 2 the player who took a big early lead in the set lost it in a tie break. Bencic ran away with the deciding set. She hit 20 double faults in that match. Gauff hit 23! Bencic hit 3 double faults in 1 game and still held. She won’t get away with so many errors against Swiatek.

If Bencic can cut out the errors she has a chance. Back Swiatek around 1.85 to 1.95 or if she loses the first set.