WTA Antwerp Quarter Final – Andrea Petkovic vs Dominika Cibulkova
Petkovic’s opponent on Wednesday, Alison Van Uytvanck, gave us an easy winner with a 1.5 set start on the set handicap with the Belgian taking the first set on a tiebreak.
Indeed, the German can consider herself rather fortunate to still be in this event after saving a number of match points against her lower ranked opponent, and scraped through a further tiebreak in the second set before taking the third in more comfortable fashion.
As I mentioned in Wednesday’s preview, Petkovic is very frequently over-rated away from clay and this is again the case today. Furthermore, fatigue may be an even bigger issue following her Fed Cup exploits, and the aforementioned long match against Van Uytvanck.
Today’s opponent Cibulkova – who despite struggling in the second set against youngster Indy De Vroome yesterday was never in serious danger – boasts much better hold/break stats on hard and indoor hard courts in the last 12 months.
In this sample, Cibulkova is better on serve, holding 64.0% compared to 61.4%, and on return, breaking opponents 44.7% to Petkovic’s 36.8%.
This generated a model price of 1.47 on Cibulkova, making the market prices of around 1.70 excellent value on the Slovakian, who has started 2015 in much better form than she concluded the 2014 season in.
Cibulkova is 12-8 when priced 1.50-1.99 on hard and indoor hard courts since January 2014, and this is slightly above expectation. Whilst not particularly adding to our confidence, it certainly does not detract from it either, and what is also worth noting is that 10 of these 12 victories came via straight sets. In addition, only one win came via less than a three game margin (a 3-6 7-6 6-3 triumph over the higher-ranked Agnieszka Radwanska at the Miami Premier Event) and this allows us to be very confident that if Cibulkova prevails, she will do so by this margin.
I like taking the bigger odds of 2.06 on Cibulkova winning giving up a three game start, and this position is today’s recommendation.
Recommendation: Dominika Cibulkova -3 games at 2.10
Price correct at the time of writing.
