WTA Cincinnati – 3rd Round – Caroline Garcia vs Elina Svitolina
The ATP Masters and WTA Premier 5 events in Cincinnati reach the last 16 stage tonight and in ATP action, there are slim pickings on the value front, so we move across to the WTA for this evening’s handicap betting recommendation which starts at around midnight UK time.
After a bad run of form, the market has reacted severely to Caroline Garcia and particularly in her opening win over Sabine Lisicki made her much bigger than my model suggests. My research shows that, generally speaking, unless a player is old or injured, players don’t tend to remain grossly out of form for long periods of time, particularly decent young prospects like Garcia.
Long-term Twitter followers will recollect that fellow prospect Svitolina, at 20 a year younger than Garcia, was a player I identified as having high potential several years ago but the market has now cottoned onto this and she has gone the full circle – from under-rated to over-rated.
This is illustrated by her status as 1.64 favourite for this clash between two fairly similarly matched players, based on the hold/break statistics.
On hard court in the last 12 months, Garcia has held serve 74.7% and broken opponents 28.5%, (combined 103.2%) whilst Svitolina is worse at 62.1% and 36.5% (98.6%) respectively. Garcia has won 58% of her matches on hard in this period, with Svitolina almost identical at 60%.
Shortening this to 2015 only, the statistical gap between the stats is even more apparent – Garcia’s stats are 73.9% and 31.4% (105.3%) whilst Svitolina is worse at 58.2% and 38.3% (96.5%). Svitolina’s main issue is her below-average ability to save break points, saving just 47.1% in 2015 on hard court.
Considering these statistics, it’s difficult to justify Svitolina’s status as a solid favourite for this match, and when ranking and opponent difficulty were factored in my model priced the two players almost evens apiece.
Svitolina has won just five matches in straight sets on hard court priced between 1.50 and 1.99 since January 2015, out of a total of 15 (33.3%), so the odds on Garcia winning at least a set at 1.56 looks a nice price given the historical tendencies and value on Garcia pre-match.
Recommendation: Back Caroline Garcia +1.5 sets at 1.56
Price correct at time of writing.
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