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tennis | Monday, February 5, 2024 12:37 PM
Tennis Picks Today for February 5th: Free Tennis Picks for Alycia Parks vs Ana Bogdan and Marie Bouzkova vs Emma Raducanu
Jon Reid
1
Tennis Picks Today: February 5th
- Parks vs Bogdan: Parks to win
- Bouzkova vs Raducanu: Raducanu to win
Another split day on Friday, as our underdog selection of Dominik Koepfer wins in Davis Cup action for Germany, but Zdenek Kolar became another part of Hazem Naw’s Cinderella story run in Koblenz.
This week we have five ATP and WTA tournaments taking place. For our previews to kick off the week, let’s head to the Transylvania Open in Romania and the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open in the United Arab Emirates.
We’ll start with Alycia Parks vs Ana Bogdan, before previewing Marie Bouzkova vs Emma Raducanu.
For more daily tennis tips, visit the bettingexpert community, but if you want more expert tips from Jon Reid, visit our Expert Insights section.
In this article:
- Alycia Parks vs Ana Bogdan Expert Tip
- Alycia Parks Recent Form
- Ana Bogdan Recent Form
- Alycia Parks vs Ana Bogdan H2H Stat of the Match
- Marie Bouzkova vs Emma Raducanu Expert Tip
- Marie Bouzkova Recent Form
- Emma Raducanu Recent Form
- Marie Bouzkova vs Emma Raducanu H2H Stat of the Match
- Safer Gambling
Alycia Parks vs Ana Bogdan (Transylvania Open) Free Pick: Big Hitting American to Power Her Way to the Second Round
- Pick: Parks to win
- Best Odds: 1.80
- Bookmaker: bet365
- Stakes: 3/10
Odds as at 2:00 am UK Time on February 5th, 2024. Odds may now differ.
The American has her flaws. Saying she lacks consistency and rallying tolerance would be kind. At 23 years old, she’s actually still decently positioned to eventually climb the rankings. See, one can develop tactical play, tennis IQ and consistency. It’s hard, however, to teach the kind of raw power she has. The serve is dominant when landing, the forehand is elite when in rhythm.
She just needs to make her game more repeatable, so she can maximise the peak points in her season and minimise the valleys.
Indoor hard courts are where she thrives, and this matchup in particular feels like a good chance for her. She’s playing on a relatively quick surface, her opponent doesn’t have elite power to send back at her and rush her from the baseline and there’s no wind or weather to contend with that could throw her off.
I’ll buy low on a powerful indoor player at a 250-level tournament.
Read on for more Expert Insights.
Alycia Parks Recent Form
It’s hard to really knock Parks’ form to start the 2024 season, despite the fact she’s only got two wins to go up against three losses.
The last one against Lucrezia Stefanini was bad, but the Italian is a pretty unique opponent, who uses a lot of variety, slices and even employs a two-handed forehand – something you almost never see. She’s also really strong at eliciting errors. I feel like that match isn’t the best barometer to judge a match against someone like Bogdan.
Other than that, a three-set defeat to Katie Boulter has actually aged pretty well, since Boulter has looked pretty strong to start the year and her loss to Coco Gauff doesn’t mean all that much, seeing as her compatriot was obliterating any and all opponents down under.
She also picked up a pair of nice wins in quick conditions in Melbourne, with both being achieved as an underdog as well.
With her power and ability to dictate and the fact she’s in ideal conditions for her game and playing someone who doesn’t necessarily profile as someone who can optimally exploit her weaknesses, I like her chances.
Ana Bogdan Recent Form
The veteran world No. 66 is always a perplexing handicap for me. I tend to really like her game, but also feel like her ranking is appropriate. She isn’t underpowered by any means, but rarely blows her opposition off the court. I wouldn’t say she spews errors left, right and centre, but I also wouldn’t say she’s the picture of solidity.
I think her problem is that she just seems like she’s stuck in the middle a little too often.
Her start to the season has seen her lose twice as much as she’s won, and we don’t really have that many matches against strong players to look at.
The big hitters she played in Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Marta Kostyuk have both beaten her, though she did give the volatile Kostyuk a run for her money.
If she can stay solid enough from the baseline, perhaps she can extract the errors she needs from Parks to win, but I do think she should be a more pronounced underdog on Monday.
Alycia Parks vs Ana Bogdan H2H – Stat of the Match
The only time these two met resulted in an odd match. Parks absolutely dominated the first set at Wimbledon last season, before losing the next two in fairly meek fashion.
It kind of epitomises Parks as a player though, as she can be so hot and cold. Given that it was on grass – a quick surface, but one Parks was fairly new to – and outdoors, I wonder if Bogdan would be able to replicate that comeback indoors in Cluj.
Sure, she’ll have the home crowd behind her, but Parks should be in a much better position to win than she was last summer.
Marie Bouzkova vs Emma Raducanu (Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open) Free Pick: Raducanu With Perfect Matchup to Score a Win
- Pick: Raducanu to win
- Best Odds: 2.30
- Bookmaker: bet365
- Stakes: 5/10
Odds as at 2:00 am UK Time on February 5th, 2024. Odds may now differ.
First, I have not been impressed with Bouzkova’s form so far in 2024. She has no quality wins, and her losses have been rather unspectacular efforts.
Second, I think this is a pretty nice matchup for Raducanu. She’s not the most error-prone player which is usually where the Czech thrives, and she certainly won’t be hit off the court by one of the more defensive, lighter-hitting players in the top-40.
Let’s see if Raducanu can continue her ranking rebuild with a first-round victory in Abu Dhabi.
Read on for more Expert Insights.
Marie Bouzkova Recent Form
As I mentioned above, Bouzkova’s form, or lack thereof, is one of the primary reasons I believe there’s value in opposing her with a strong opponent who can match up well with her.
Bouzkova hasn’t impressed to start the year, and without much offence to her game, it can be tough for players like her to play her way out of it. Losses to players like Elina Svitolina and Linda Noskova are tough to critique all that much, but losing both so decisively? That’s where I have issues. Losing to a player without much offence in Yulia Putintseva is also hard to overlook.
The wins haven’t been all that impressive either. Amanda Anisimova won just one game, and that seems more like an outlier than predictive and then Viktorija Golubic and Magdalena Frech are fairly middling opposition.
Without much power, she will have to rely on a lot of Raducanu errors, and that isn’t exactly something that the Brit does often.
Emma Raducanu Recent Form
The comeback tour continues for Raducanu, who has a good chance here to win her opening match for the third tournament in three to start 2024.
After beating the aggressive, but error-prone Elena Gabriela Ruse in her first match in a long time, she played one of the matches of January against Svitolina, splitting a pair of tiebreaks before running out of gas in a physical contest.
In Melbourne, she took care of the business of Shelby Rogers, who hadn’t played in a while herself and then lost another three-setter to one of the form players of the last several months in Yafan Wang, who has surged back into the top-100 and just this past week reached the semifinals in Hua Hin, Thailand.
I like that she hasn’t forced the issue since returning and is scheduling fairly responsibly. With a very strong all-around game that includes variety, sneaky pop, the ability to work all parts of the court off both wings and decent hands and net game, I think she’s equipped to deal with Bouzkova’s solidity and then far more able to generate offence than her opponent.
Marie Bouzkova vs Emma Raducanu H2H – Stat of the Match
No meetings between these two just yet.
The stat to look at here is the Elo rating for each of these women. With Raducanu having slightly better serve metrics and Bouzkova having a slight edge on return, factoring in records and quality of competition is key.
When we look at the blended hard-court elos, we see a 14-point difference – an indicator that this is a near coin flip of a match.
That backs up the notion I have that the value here is with the dog, and that doesn’t even account for the qualitative aspect of the matchup.
SAFER GAMBLING
At bettingexpert, we always take a safe approach to gambling. We’ll never bet more than we can afford or chase losses. For more advice, head to our Safer Gambling hub.
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