Tennis Betting Advice - August 2020

Our three women in action today...

Wednesday 12th August 2020

In your Ones to Watch email today:

  • WTA Lexington…
  • Our Ones to Watch…
  • 2nd round matches today…

The event organisers will be happy in Lexington. This newly-created WTA event gets a blockbuster match on Thursday, with episode #31 of the Serena-Venus saga…

The Williams sisters will play tomorrow for a place in the quarter finals. This will be their 31st tournament meeting. The career head-to-head stands at 18-12 to younger sister, Serena. We’ll take a closer look at that match in the morning.

Our Ones to Watch…

Over in Prague, our interest ended in the very first round. At odds of 50/1+ and 100/1+, as Veronika Kudermetova and Linda Fruhvirtova were here, we have to absorb plenty of 1st round defeats over the course of each season. It’s part of the game.

  • Aged 23 and 15 years old respectively, we’ll get plenty more opportunities to back Kudermetova and Fruhvirtova in the tournaments and seasons to come

Unless anyone has a time machine or a crystal ball, we won’t be finding a finalist every week. But as I said on Sunday night, that won’t stop me trying…

This week, going into today’s 2nd round matches at WTA Lexington, we have three women all looking to book a place in the quarter finals.

Our Each Way, outsider picks in Kentucky are all in the bottom side of the draw, away from no.1 seed Serena Williams who is in the top section.

Our three players in action today:

33/1 Magda Linette
33/1 Anna Blinkova
20/1 Ons Jabeur

2nd Round chances in Kentucky…

In the Match Winner markets today, all four 2nd-round encounters on the Lexington schedule have similar prices, with a 1/2 (1.5) favourite and a 13/8 (2.63) underdog…

Linette is the 13/8 outsider against Jennifer Brady. I think that’s a little harsh on our player. Linette was impressive in her 1st round, 2-0 win over another American opponent, Lauren Davis. As with that match, the Pole will need to overturn a negative career head-to-head record Brady today (1-2). If Magda serves well again, she’s more than capable of doing that.

Blinkova is also the 13/8 underdog in her match. Again, I think the 1/2 favouritism for her opponent, Marie Bouzkova, is slightly exaggerated. In this one, our player actually has the head-to-head in her favour (1-0). Both women came through the 1st round against players with injury/ fitness issues. In Blinkova’s match, Kristie Ahn retired in the third set with a knee injury. Jo Konta experienced heart palpitations and light-headedness against Bouzkova. Today is a proper test of form.

Jabeur is our sole favourite of the day. The Tunisian, ranked at a career-high of no.39 in the world, is a solid 1/2 in general to beat no.135, Olga Govortsova. The Belarusian is one of the mothers on the tour, having returned from a maternity break in 2018. Govortsova has been in good form in 2020, but so has Jabeur. The head-to-head here is actually 1-0 to Govortova, although that was on clay back in 2017. I would expect Jabeur to raise her game when it matters today.

The winner of Jabeur v Govortsova will go on to face Coco Gauff or Aryna Sabalenka…

Gauff v Sabalenka should be a good match to watch this evening. American teenager Gauff is the 13/8 outsider, but despite only being 16 years old, she might have the calmer head on her shoulders than the big-hitting world no.11. As ever with Sabalenka, it depends if enough of her ferocious shots land in the court.

If I’m right, then all three of our players stand a fair chance of progressing to the next round today. The most important thing is the price. In the Outright Winner market, we’ve got between 20/1 and 33/1 for Jabeur, Linette and Blinkova. Those are our kind of prices. I’ll report back tomorrow on how we’re doing.

Play starts today at 4pm UK time. You can watch all the matches live on Amazon Prime Video, and also on certain bookies’ websites, including Bet365.

Enjoy the tennis…

Best wishes,

Oliver Upstone

Tom Wilson

Ones to Watch