tennis | Tuesday, May 24, 2022 2:29 PM (Revised at: Wednesday, May 25, 2022 1:20 PM)

Wednesday's Tennis Best Bet: WTA French Open, May 25th

Jon Reid

WTA French Open Best Bet: Mertens vs Bouzkova

Wednesday, May 25th, TBD

This match has been cancelled. Thursday’s French Open best bet is available now.

For more French Open tips, for Wednesday, please visit our French Open tips page.

Three times now in 10 selections that the pick has had a commanding lead that has crumbled. Really tough times when that happens, but hopefully that will even out.

Wednesday brings us a new round of action, as the second round gets underway. The first selection of the round of 64 comes from the women’s draw in a match featuring Elise Mertens and Marie Bouzkova.

While most players who aren’t adept on the clay or dislike playing on the surface were eliminated in the opening round of action, Bouzkova managed to advance. It’s hard to take much from her 6-2, 6-1 win in her first match, however, considering she played a lucky loser in Anastasia Gasanova, who is no clay wizard herself.

Mertens, on the other hand, had struggled for form in 2022 but managed to breeze past a tricky opponent in her opening match in straight sets, where much of the betting community had expected a rather tight affair.

Digging into the matchup, Bouzkova isn’t someone that profiles well to trouble Mertens. She doesn’t have the requisite power to hit through both the surface and the Belgian. She also isn’t a clay court aficionado who can utilise a variety of spins and drop shots to keep Mertens on her toes. She’s primarily a baseliner, and that doesn’t bode well against Mertens who will be able to dictate against Bouzkova, and who is rock solid from the baseline in her own right.

The next step is to explain why there is value in this pricing. With the markets deeming this a coin flip, there should be a reason why. That comes down to two things. First, the aforementioned form in 2022 of Mertens. The second is Bouzkova’s outlier clay season in 2022.

On the former, a solid first-round performance and good stylistic matchup are reassuring. As for the latter, there are two reasons to be sceptical of Bouzkova’s performance on the red dirt this season. The first is that the 5-2 record is slightly skewed. Two of those matches were played in Madrid qualifying against players at a much lower talent level. The other is that Madrid is played at altitude, where the conditions are slightly quicker, which would be more to her liking.

Mertens may not have earned the right to be an overwhelming favourite in this match just yet, but she should certainly be at least a slight favourite.