WTA: Miami Open Tennis Final: Sloane Stephens- Jelena Ostapenko
We did, however, get our perfect final in Miami with Sloane Stephens and Jelena Ostapenko each winning their semis on Thursday , previews on both matches are reproduced at the foot of this email and provide a lot of background information.
I am going to say a few words about the final, but before I do, this will be our last tennis tournament until the French Open, we have covered 7 tournaments since Wimbledon last year, 91 bets and a ROI of +25.65%. WTA tennis has always been a top 3 sport, but seems to throw up even better betting opportunites nowadays with plenty of "upsets" which suits my betting style /model, but those numbers are unsustainable long term so we will surely see a dip at some stage.
I am loath to oppose Stephens whom we have sided with at good odds to beat Muguruza, Kerber and Azarenka three #1 players and she could hardly have been more impressive and is close to her US Open level of last September. Ostapenko is thrilling to watch and goes for every shot and can be unplayable when in the groove and, unlike many other players she is totally fearless and unafraid to lose and, as she herself said, is the best returner in the game ! Both will get plenty of chances on second serve today, but Ostapenko's first is the more reliable shot and her unrelentless bravery enough to give her the very marginal edge in what seems certain to be an ultra close contest. JO is 5-0 in tie breaks this fortnight and has not dropped a set in Miami. Tough to call, but I see this as a coinflip and oddsmakers don't and Ostapenko's chance is greater than the 43% she has been allocated and at the end of the day it is a long term losing policy betting odds on at the business end of slam and Premier WTA events.
1.25 units Jelena Ostapenko to beat Sloane Stephens 2.35 Pinnacle/Sportmarket .
Good Luck.
Sloane Stephens - Victoria Azarenka
It would be very hard to oppose Sloane Stephens after we backed her at 2.92 to beat Muguruza and strongly @ 2.21 against Angelique Kerber and she won both in two sets in imperious fashion ............
We sided with Sloane Stephens yesterday and she made a mockery of those almost 2-1 odds to beat Garbine Muguruza 6-3 6-4 in a convincing performance .........
Last June I wrote .........
Today she is going to have to step up one more level to defeat defending champion Garbine Muguruza who is at long last starting to show us glimpses of that amazing form of 12 months ago and also, that some of those demons that have been troubling her have subsided and she has looked more at peace with herself. I doubt they are too far away, but on her day, she is the best female clay court player on the planet and for a set and a bit against both Anett Kontaveit and Yulia Putintseva, she showed us that.
A month later Muguruza was Wimbledon champion, two months prior to that she was as likely to be in tears inbetween changeovers as anything else and suffered a number of disturbing "meltdowns" and at this tournament I wrote .............
On Saturday, Muguruza was playing Shuai Zhang a decent enough player , but with no disrespect to her, one who should never cause the French Open champion who is as good as anyone in the game, too many problems and certainly not what looked like a panic attack at the end of the first set ! She came out to serve for it, could barely hit a ball and lost the opener, then won the next two 2&2 , all it needed was Muguruza to hit 3-4 decent strokes in a row and it was normal service resumed, or at least pretty much. It is all very odd.
You would have to be an idiot of the first order to not realise what a MASSIVE talent Muguruza is , but she has issues, they are never far from the surface and my advice would be never to back her at low odds against anyone. Her recent form looks OK, but I can see a few holes in that, you can only beat who you are asked to play, but she ran into a few players totally out of form and got a couple of walkovers and there were two worrying third set capitulations 6-1 to Daria Kasatkina in Dubai and by the same scoreline to Sachia Vickery in Indian Wells two weeks ago, where she was defending quarter finals points from 2017.
Talking of players to avoid at low odds , step forward Sloane Stephens who is someone else we should never fully trust unless we get a price , but she is close to 2-1 to win today, so that is not a problem. At Indian Wells she lost to Daria Kasatkina, ahead of which I wrote ..........
Sloane Stephens is never going to be someone we see 40 weeks per year and has struggled for form since her US Open win last year, not playing that much and going 4-6 , but she won twice for the first time subsequently last time out in Acapulco and beat an admittedly short of match practice Victoria Azarenka yesterday. Also she can find form from nowhere, witness 0-5 last year going to the Canadian Masters where she made the last 4, repeated that feat in Cincinnati the next week and then won in New York ! She is 17-1 on US soil since last years Miami Open and is clearly a home bird ! Stephens is also 12-7 at Indian Wells (winning 7/10 when her own rank is inside the top 50) with four wins over former world #1 players .
She lost 4&3 and it was a disappointing showing, but to a player at the very top of her game. Stephens has posted two good subsequent wins here in Miami and is up to 19-2 on US soil in the last 12 months which is incredible and I can find some other stats too to give SS a chance today. She likes a big target and is 6-4 in the last six years against top 10 players who are 1.83m+ tall, including winning the last four, all on hard courts and each in two sets ( Pliskova, Venus and Kvitova twice). She is also 12-5 in Miami when her own ranking is top 100. Stephens is a Florida girl, born , raised and still lives (50 minutes from these courts) in the Greater Miami Area and very used to the weather and conditions here. Muguruza has played just three hours of tennis since Dubai which is more than a month ago and has not looked match sharp and win or lose, I cannot agree with the odds on Stephens and feel we have to bet something.
Muguruza won very few points on second serve and Stephens 53% on return and the Spanish player had a tough day, with Stephens more emphatically in control than the scoreline suggests. This was the best she has played since the US Open and it does leave you wondering how her focus can dip for months inbetween, as, at this level of performance, she looks and feels unplayable regardless of opponent. Those dips are also odd given how committed , competent and motivated her coach is and Stephens and Kamau Murray have a special relationship, with FAR more respect than you often see between employer and employee on tour and this is a true partnership. If you have a sapre five minutes, I would definitedly suggest reading this article on Murray and his XS project, it gives you a real insight into the coach and his, I have to use the same word again, commitment to everything he does. If you have more time, I would suggest this interview, he is a very impressive individual, who will have a big influence in tennis over the next 30 years.
Those dips are hard to quantify, but Stephens admitted it was hard to focus after her Open win and had taken time to get back on track, but she looks on the rails again now and she can do things on court that NO ONE else can do, she has so much time on the ball and can completely change her shot at the last minute and do it time and time again and that is incredibly difficult to play against.
Angelique Kerber dodged a bullet yesterday and was in big trouble for much of her match with qualifier Yafan Wang taking three hours to win 6-7 7-6 6-3 making eight double faults and her attacking game going missing for long periods.
Stephens has won the last three h2h meetings, including the last at the Rogers Cup 2&2 before the US Open last year, when Kerber was not is as good shape, but SS was only just starting her comeback, she had won through two rounds, but coming into that event she had lost five matches in a row and not for two months. The stats for that game bear out the scoreline, with Kerber having few break points and struggling on second serve and return.
Stephens doesn't meet that taller player today (see above) , but does face a leftie and she is 11-1 , including winning the last nine against those playing the "wrong way round" which is about as good as you will see, four of those nine were against players currently top ten and only for the loss of one set. I don't think oddsmakers have the right favourite today.
Stephens won 6-1 6-2
The same day I made what I felt was a decent case for any value in the Victoria Azarenka- Karolina Pliskova match being with the Czech player, but that was not to be and Azarenka won 7-5 6-3 and is back in the big time . The Belarus superstar is top 2 at her best, or was, the competition might have stepped up in the interim, certainly the youngsters have, but that is her level and if you see her wins here.....Bellis, Keys, Sevastova, Radwanska, Pliskova they look very impressive on paper, but all opponents have had issues, some of which we discussed and I will definitely be talking about Pliskova's at some stage and only really Sevastova bought her A game and actually looked in control, until she started to (not for the first time) beat herself. None of this is Azarenka's fault, she can only beat players on her side of the draw and in 12 months time we will probably look at those bare results and think wow ! But right now those opponents did not live up to their billing. All said, she has done wonderfully well, but will have to step up again today and considerably IMO, she is capable of that, but her lack of matches in the last 12 months remains a concern and she has to be at least a little drained.
These two have met four times previously but only once in the last three years, at Indian Wells two weeks ago, when Stephens won 6-1 7-5, I don't think that tells us a huge amount. It was early in Azarenka's comeback, but the courts there would have favoured her more than Stephens. However, SS won just shy of 60% of points on return and was putting huge pressure on Azarenka's second serve ( 5 df's and just 3 of 15 points won) and there are hardly any negatives there for Stephens to concern herself with. This is all a little pointless, I have Stephens favourite and in terms of what and how strongly I am betting, my hands are tied. Also, Azarenka is deceptively tall 1.83m and meets that "taller girl criteria" (see above) and it will again be windy and as much as the Belarus superstar likes it here, Stephens is far more used to those conditions (again, see above).
1.75 units Sloane Stephens to beat Victoria Azarenka 2.23 Pinnacle/Sportmarket.
Danielle Rose Collins- Jelena Ostapenko
I have not seen a lot of DRC, but yesterday I wrote .........
I will get a few lines of notes down about Danielle Rose Collins (DRC from now on) as we have not discussed her much previously and she is clearly worth "knowing". Collins has won 18 matches in 2018, four over the rest of her career ! That was because she opted to get her education and go down the college route, where she was the 7th woman in history to win two NCAA singles championships , so, a star at that level !
She graduated in late 2016 and did find the initial transition tough, but was in no rush and she and her team having taken time to get everything right and that policy is clearly now working out. DRC is a Florida native and went to the University of Florida , but switched to Virginia where she had a better relationship with the coaching staff. All through and before her college career she has worked also with Nick Bollettieri at the IMG Academy and is still based out of the Bradenton tennis, where she now trains with Pat Harrison (Christian and Ryan Harrison's father) and Tom Hill ......
"Tom is such an even-keeled guy. He's just very enthusiastic all the time and that's so helpful because sometimes you're not going to be a big ray of sunshine and you need somebody that's enthusiastic," Collins said.
"Pat's known me for such a long time," Collins added. "It's good having someone like that in our corner guiding both of us because it's a little bit of a learning experience."
So another player very comfortable with conditions here in Florida and not your average "unknown" 24 yo on tour, as she has opted for another route into the game and has had the best coaching and advice for many years and developed a winning mentality, albeit from a different level of tennis.
She faces a tall big serving opponent today and has met several of those in recent weeks, including wins over Coco Vandeweghe and Madison Keys , neither are in the greatest form, but they are very highly ranked fellow countrywomen and big scalps for Collins. Keys said after their meeting: "I think she's very crafty. She gets a ton of balls back. More than anything I think she's just really good at restarting the point over and over again."
DRC is 16-2 since the Australian Open winning the 125k Newport Beach tournament and 5 of her last 6 matches against top 100 ranked players (she went to Melbourne ranked 188). Her only losses since the AO were to Carla Suarez Navarro and Sara Errani, who are two of the smaller players on tour and it might well be that she prefers a bigger, maybe less mobile target, but a bit soon to reach any firm conclusions .
Intersting match up, both of today's quarter finals are and I am sure we will learn something for the months ahead.
She beat Venus Williams 2&3 with a fearless display and as her opponent said...... "Collins played very well, aggressively, she went for every shot and they landed. "There are days when they don't, and that wasn't today."
Venus did not serve an ace, she made 80% of first serves and won just 51% of those points and only against Konta have Williams' numbers been good, of course, I am looking for holes and they might not be there, but DRC looked in trouble against Vekic and Puig losing the first set and they both stopped applying pressure , that might be down to Collins, I cannot be sure.
I definitely feel that the quick turnaround and media hoopla from last night is against her this time, she has already played seven matches in often brutal conditions in Miami and that is three more than her opponent. Also she will meet her most aggressive opponent to date and one who will, or more likely cannot, take a backward step.
Everyone in tennis would be in trouble if Ostapenko had a second serve and could just bring herself to aim one foot inside the line, instead of hitting it, but then she would not be Jelena Ostapenko and so much fun to watch ! This feels like a slug fest, which should suit JO, she is not going to refuse a shoot out against anyone and on form, she is super confident. A few weeks back a reporter asked all the top players who had the best return in the game, Ostapenko was the only one who said "me" ........... and I love her for that ! She has made over 56% of break points this fortnight , including playing two top ten opponents , DRC is around 40% and overall has met a lower level of opponent and that number could be key in a match where there seem sure to be plenty of BP's. I have looked at yesterday's match again this morning and don't feel that Collins served well, especially when the wind got up . I like Ostapenko , in form and whilst not at Roland Garros levels yet, she is getting there, it is these type of aggressive opponents that she thrives against.
1.5 units Jelena Ostapenko -3 games 1.99 Pinnacle/Sportmarket Pro.
