Long term readers will know that we have done incredibly well by taking on Serena, who is the greatest woman player of modern times, early in grand slam events and she is always vulnerable through the first week and she has "only" made it past the quarter finals here at RG three times in 13 visits, losing twice inside two rounds in the last three years.
We very rarely cover tennis aside from grand slam events, but I did say a few words about Williams the younger in Rome, when she faced Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova ........ "Serena got her butt kicked by Kvitova in the Madrid final, but will be pleased with her overall performance on return to clay, although the altitude in Madrid and surface are very different from anything else she will face in the next month. She did play two Fed Cup singles matches before that, actually in Italy and won both , but dropped eight games to Camila Giorgi and was taken all the way by Sara Errani. She should win today, but meeting someone so comfortable on the surface and in good form in her first WTA start of the season on "real" clay will not be easy."
She won that 1 &3 , but it was much closer than those bare numbers suggest and Pavly had a lot of chances on the Williams serve and the world number one was not at her best and pulled out of the tournament before her next match and has not played since.
For Andrea Hlavackova, read Marina Erakovic, another player who has banked a couple of million dollars, largely courtesy of her doubles form and she is a two time grand slam winner in doubles, including her at RG. That means she is unlikely to freeze on the big stage and will have played on the Phillipe-Chatrier show court several times before. She is 0-5 lifetime against top 20 ranked players on clay, but in the four completed matches, took six and later nine games from Victoria Azarenka and a set from the other two, Azarenka was ranked world #1 in their second meeting and that augurs well. The underdog is battle hardened after coming through qualifying and we only need her to take five games today ( if they play just two sets) and she seems more that capable of managing that, with Serena also possibly being a little rusty .
Andrea Hlavackova +7.5 games 2.09 Pinnacle Sports/Sportmarket Pro.
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