Monday's WTA Tennis Best Bet: Budapest, July 11th
WTA Budapest BEST BET: BAINDL vs BABOS
Monday, July 11th, 13:00 UK Time
As we unwind from the season’s third of four grand slam events, it’s time to turn our attention back to the ATP and WTA Tours, with four events scattered throughout Europe and North America this week.
For our selections this week on the WTA Tour, we’ll be evaluating matches from Lausanne, Switzerland and the Hungarian capital of Budapest.
Monday’s best bet comes from a later tournament match featuring Kateryna Baindl and Hungarian wild card Timea Babos.
Babos may be a very strong doubles player, but at just 29 years old, her singles game has fallen off a cliff.
Having never been particularly adept at playing on clay courts, Babos has more losses on the dirt in 2022 than wins – despite only having played at the ITF level. Her more power-centric style, as well as poor mobility, endurance and rally tolerance makes the surface really tough for her to find success on.
Baindl isn’t a clay-court specialist in her own right, but her incredibly consistent play from the baseline and ability to minimise her unforced error count.
Considering how the Ukrainian’s strength matches up perfectly with Babos’ weaknesses, it’s the perfect matchup for her to find a straightforward, straight sets victory. Her ability to wait out errors, move the ball from side-to-side and exploit the vulnerabilities of Babos’ movement and potentially tire her opponent out have me believing this handicap should be five to 5.5 games and not the -4.5 games on offer.
Baindl has also played on the slower red clay far more recently than Babos, who has been on hard courts or green clay for over a month now. The 28-year-old Ukraine native has also gone 6-1 in her seven matches over the past few weeks on clay, reaching an ITF W60 final in Montpellier and registering a pair of wins at the venue in Budapest.
Finally, when looking to back a player to cover a larger handicap like 4.5 games, it’s good to know that the opposition tends to lose sets in lopsided fashion. In each of her last three losses on red clay, Babos has lost at least one set by a margin of 6-2 or worse.
All of this leads me to backing the favourite here on the handicap.
Selection: Baindl -4.5 games
Odds: 1.98 (Marathonbet)
Stakes: 4/10
Odds are valid as of 10:30 am on 9th July 2022. Odds may now differ.
