WTA Eastbourne – Semi Final – Sloane Stephens vs Agnieszka Radwanska
Just four players are left at the semi-final stage of the last Wimbledon warm-up events and after the disappointment of Wednesday, we look to continue the recent successes of the last fortnight with a handicap betting foray into the WTA event at Eastbourne.
Agnieskza Radwanska has had a very poor 2015 by her standards and has dropped from 6th in the world at the start of the season to a current 13th. However, she has looked more comfortable on grass and apart from a shock defeat to Monica Niculescu in Nottingham a fortnight ago, has crushed her opponents on grass.
Apart from the Niculescu defeat, she has played six matches on grass and won every set by 6-3 or better. In addition to this, she has won those matches by a minimum of eight games, and she has won in straight sets in her last 12 wins. This makes a betting handicap prospect a real possibility against the over-rated Stephens, and for good measure Radwanska has won all their three head to head matches by at least five games.
To put how over-rated Stephens is into context, we can look at the grass court hold/break percentages for the last two years. Stephens, currently ranked at 42 in the world, has held 72.8% compared to Radwanska’s 78.1%, and the Pole is also much stronger on return, breaking opponents 43.1% to Stephens’ limited figure of 30.1%.
This, as well as the dominant head to head record created a model price of 1.14 on Radwanska, and with market prices a touch above 1.40 this represents very strong value. This is likely to be due the fact that the market has been very wary of Radwanska of late (she was around evens against Karolina Pliskova despite having a much better surface record) and the general over-hype of Stephens, who has generated a -21% ROI in her last 50 matches based on Pinnacle Sports’ closing prices.
We have to go back to 2013 to find a match that Radwanska won on grass in three sets, and overall on the surface as a pre-match favourite 24/28 completed match wins have come by a 2-0 scoreline (24/37 completed matches overall). Only one win has come by fewer than a three game margin, and just three via fewer than four games.
This gives us an abundance of handicap options, with a 2-0 win at 2.13 seeming pretty viable, and -4 games at 2.00 also appealing. I recommend splitting stakes between the two outcomes.
Recommendation: Split Stakes Back Radwanska -1.5 sets at 2.13, -4 games at 2.00.
Prices correct at the time of writing.
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