OTW Extra Email Archive - April 2017
This week - a 20/1 youngster in Colombia...
Monday 10th April 2017
In your Ones to Watch email today:
‘Ones to Watch’ make the finals again...
There’s a pattern emerging here...
For the second week running we saw a Women’s final featuring two of our previous Ones to Watch players...
Russian teenager Daria Kasatkina won her first senior title in her first ever final – beating fellow 19 year old Jelena Ostakpenko to take the WTA Charleston trophy.
Kasatkina was 28/1 pre-tournament.
Runner-up Ostapenko was 50/1.
Both youngsters are on our Ones to Watch in 2017 list (published back in December).
Like I said last week, taking the positives...
Kasatkina and Ostapenko making the final in Charleston shows we’re doing something right with the players making our short-lists. We do, after all, call them ‘ones to watch.’
On the other hand, it’s frustrating when I don’t manage to pinpoint the actual tournament where our highlighted players go on to land the odds.
We’ll keep going after the upcoming and underrated players though. None of the favourites won last week’s tournaments, and that 28/1 v 50/1 Charleston final suggests we should continue to target the Women’s Outright Winner markets in particular.
With that in mind, an improving young player catches my eye in Bogota this week...
This week – a 20/1 youngster in Colombia...
Event: WTA Bogota (Claro Open), Colombia
Surface: Clay court
Date: 10th – 16th April
Last year this tournament saw a 16/1 shot beat a 25/1 shot in the final. We were on the winner, Irina Falconi as a One to Watch pick that week.
And I fancy targeting a weak-looking Bogota draw again this year...
There are no women ranked inside the Top 20 on show here. And the top seed and highest-ranked player, Kiki Bertens (World #21) is in the top half of the draw. Bertens is the 5/1 favourite for the trophy, but has yet to win more than two matches in a row so far in 2017.
Falconi is around 20/1 to retain her title, but her form has been poor for some time now – failing to get past the 2nd round in any of her last 14 tournaments.
I prefer to look to the opposite side of the draw...
Former Bogota champions Lara Arruabarrena (2012) and Mariana Duque Marino (2010) are in the bottom half, at odds of 9/1 and 22/1 respectively. But there’s not much in the recent form that makes me think either player can put together a trophy-winning run again this time.
Greek youngster Maria Sakkari is the one that lurks in the draw for me, at 20/1...
The 21 year old first caught my attention last summer, coming through qualifying at Wimbledon and going on to give Venus Williams a great match, going down 2 sets to 1 on that day but having done enough to put her on the radar.
A look through the formbook shows that Sakkari’s best WTA tournament run to date has been on clay, when she reached the Istanbul quarter finals last year.
More recently, she knocked out our 66/1 pick Lauren Davis in Charleston last week, before losing 2-1 to eventual finalist Ostapenko.
Sakkari has played more tennis on clay than on any other surface, including reaching a couple of lower-tier ITF finals on clay last season.
Bogota is the kind of low-profile WTA event where I believe we can expect a few surprises, and where we should be actively going after a player available at double-figure prices. Falconi was a first-time WTA title winner for us here last year, and the improving Sakkari could be the one to make the step up this time...
One to Watch:
Outright Winner – Each Way terms: 1/2 odds 1-2 places
Play gets underway in Bogota from 4.30pm today, UK time.
I’ll be back next week with more Ones to Watch, when the clay court season and French Open preparation steps up a notch with the Monte Carlo Masters...
Enjoy the tennis.
Best wishes,