tennis | Tuesday, May 2, 2023 6:34 AM (Revised at: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 8:40 AM)

Tuesday Tennis Best Bet: WTA 125K Reus, Lauren Davis vs Julia Grabher

Jon Reid

Lauren Davis vs Julia Grabher Best Bet: Tuesday, May 2nd

Surprisingly strong win for Maria Sakkari, as she takes out one of the potential contenders of the week in Paula Badosa in straight sets.

For Tuesday, we’ll shift over to the 125K event in Reus, Spain and take a look at the early match of the day between Lauren Davis and Julia Grabher.

In this article:

Lauren Davis vs Julia Grabher Preview
Lauren Davis vs Julia Grabher Best Bet

Lauren Davis vs Julia Grabher Preview

May 2nd, 9:00 (UK Time)

Rather surprising to see the Austrian as the underdog in this one for a few reasons.

For starters, one of these players is a clay courter through and through and the other hits a flat ball and much prefers hard courts (and faster ones at that). The clay courter? Not the favourite in the betting markets at the moment.

The other reason is that Davis has played a few matches since skipping the Sunshine Double events of Indian Wells and Miami on hard courts in her native country. She hasn’t won either of them, and they were both in conditions that would help her game a bit (altitude of Madrid on red clay and the quicker green dirt on the courts in Charleston).

With potential concerns about her being 100% healthy – keep in mind, she’s been blown away in the third sets of each of her two matches on clay this season – and a big surface edge for Grabher here, I’d look to play Grabher to win the match at anything over even odds and even down into the 1.80 region.

Lauren Davis vs Julia Grabher Best Bet

The only concerning part of this matchup is that I can’t even identify why the market is so far off from my numbers on this one.

Usually, there is deceivingly strong form, or one of the players is young and the market doesn’t have much data to work with, but here it seems plain as day that Grabher should be the favourite.

Perhaps the level of competition for Davis’ losses are garnering her some support, but that’s about all I can think of.

She’s not been winning much this season, she’s not very strong on clay, doesn’t play with much topspin, doesn’t have bigger weapons and even had some health concerns in recent weeks.

I think betting Grabher here as an underdog is a no-brainer.