Weeks 22 & 23 - French Open (Roland-Garros) - Paris, France (clay) - main draw

emmsie69 · ATP level

RE: Weeks 22 & 23 - French Open (Roland-Garros) - Paris, France (clay) - main draw

RedSquirrel · Satellite level

PaulM wrote:

If Badosa can keep it together she's got a real chance.

Harriet is now 5th highest ranked seeded loser. If my understanding is correct, two known withdrawals means the highest 6 go into a draw (4 plus number of spaces). But could easily not be in the running by the end of the day, and I'd certainly like one of the slots to go to Zvonoreva.

1 or 2 withdrawals then LL are chosen from the top 4 ranked losers. 3 or more withdrawals LL are chosen from a pool of 2 + number of withdrawals.

Andy Parker · Strong Club Player

Harriet has finished as the 5th highest ranked loser in the final round if my calculations are correct. The highest are 1. Zvonareva, 7 Friedsam, 9 Cocciaretto, 27. Govortsova, 31 Harriet. With Riske withdrawing, everyone seems to think that there will be more than 4 players in the draw for Lucky Losers. Hope you are correct.

When previous posts were made, Zavatska seeded 21 and Voegele seeded 22 were both playing, but they have both just finished and luckily for Harriet, both won.

Fingers crossed for Harriet to get a place in the draw - 2 wins on clay against reasonable opponents is quite good in my opinion, and I'd love to see her get a Lucky Loser slot. One of the qualifiers or Lucky Losers will play Vesnina; 34 years old and out for over a year because of having a baby - I'd make all the qualifiers favourites if they draw her.

-- Edited by Andy Parker on Friday 28th of May 2021 02:45:53 PM

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Qualifiers and initial LLs have been placed:

[Q] Bara v [WC] Sharma
[24] Gauff v [Q] Krunic
[Q] Liang v Ferro
[Q] Lepchenko v Zhang
[Q] Baptiste v Blinkova
[17] Sakkari v [Q] Zavatska
Paolini v [Q] Voegele
[Q] Sanders v [14] Mertens
[Q] Arruabarrena v Gracheva
[Q] Schmiedlova v Mladenovic
Collins v [Q] Xiyu Wang
[Q] Kalinina v [26] Kerber
Vesnina v [LL] Govortsova
[Q] Minnen v [11] Kvitova
Tauson v [Q] Gorgodze
[Q] Konjuh v [3] Sabalenka
Brengle v [Q] Osorio Serrano
[LL] Cocciaretto v Bogdan

You could probably add Konjuh vs Sabalenka to the list of eye catching R1 matches.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Bet365's current outright odds:

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Cirstea is ominously in the Strasbourg final

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

For what its worth tennis abstract has jo as a close favourite to beat Cirstea and also win her 2nd match, getting to the 3rd round. Which would be something most of us would take .

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

All just opinions, but I personally think this year more than most, those type of forecasts are less accurate.

I mean if you take someone like Kiki Bertens for example. She's obviously got pedigree as a former top 10 player, and a bit of a clay specialist, won Madrid a couple of years ago etc., but she has literally won one tour match since last years French Open, and her subsequent surgery - against a 15 year old MDWC in Madrid. Lost her other 4 tour matches in straight sets, winning 17 games combined.

The bookies have her match with Hercog as pretty much 50/50, yet TA have it more 80/20 Kiki, and a 24.3% chance of making the QF (just behind Osaka at 25.7%), whereas she is pretty much a rank outsider (to take the title) at the bookies, despite it being her best slam - 150/1 at Bet365 and Unibet, 125/1 at SkyBet etc, and the 20/1 8th favourite to make the QFs at a lot of bookies.

www.bet365.com/

I think the same applies with Konta, far too much emphasis on her admittedly fantastic 2019 clay form, which was like 24/25 months ago - that's a very long time in tennis, but yes, if she did beat Cirstea, and then Trevisan/AVU in R2, before subsequently bowing out in R3, I think most of us would definitely take that, even if it meant a hefty loss of 650 ranking points.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Speaking of Trevisan, she's only won 1 match since making the surprise run to the quarters here last time.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Yes, awful run for her and she was pretty much in tears after blowing MPs in her last match in Rome. She'll have a 4 month buffer with 2020 RG points staying on a little longer, but a fair bit of pressure on her coming up.

There's a thread on TF called infamous 10+ losing streaks, and it's amazing the amount of players who have, or nearly make that list since the restart. Zhang and Niculescu were 0-9 before recently ending it, and further outside the top 100, Hogenkamp as we touched upon against Sam was 0-8, Kawa and Paar have now lost 10 in a row, and Kung is currently on a 9 match losing streak. I definitely seem to notice these streaks more since the restart.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Jo generally doesn't have the best of reputations on TennisForum, and I'm sure that'll will have played a part, but there's one of those 'who will win' poll threads on there, one where you can't see the results without voting, nor can you change your vote, 52 people have votes thus far, and a massive 47 are going with Cirstea (32 of those in straight sets). Now that really is extreme.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Not sure if this article has been posted elsewhere, but within that thread, there is this link - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/57284034

Large paragraphs about Dan, Jo, and Cam, and then the following line about Heather at the very end:

Heather Watson is Britain's final representative in the singles and the world number 71 has won just one of her past seven matches.

Now I know her form hasn't exactly been inspiring of late, but surely they could have mustered something a little better than that - at least something like 'she'll hope to gat back on track' etc.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/57284034

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Ace Ventura wrote:
Jo generally doesn't have the best of reputations on TennisForum, and I'm sure that'll will have played a part, but there's one of those 'who will win' poll threads on there, one where you can't see the results without voting, nor can you change your vote, 52 people have votes thus far, and a massive 47 are going with Cirstea (32 of those in straight sets). Now that really is extreme.

Well, that's got to be worth a 10p on JoKo, hasn't it, then... And Hev while I'm at it.

And one on Andujar, who's playing Thiem, coz Thiem has ben 'dissing' our Evo). Nothing like plain old jingoistic 'allez les Brits! betting'

Andy Parker · Strong Club Player

It's interesting - most people on here believe that Jo had a time in her career where she was absolutely brilliant and now is in a period of decline.

I don't think it is that simple and believe that although Jo has injury issues, she still remains a good class player, and that apart from a small group of players including Osaka and Halep, that there are few players who are consistently good on the women's tour, and that there are maybe 20 or 30 players below the top ones who are capable of going on a run and winning major tournaments. I'd even include the odd non-seed in that group - Ostapenko for instance, and would certainly have Jo Ko in that category.

I know Cristea is a very good player who is on top form, but I still think if Jo comes into the match fully fit that she has a real chance if she plays at her best. I was shocked at the bookies' odds, but on reflection they are judging both players more on their current form than how much quality they have - and at best Jo does have the game to beat Cristea.

Others were correct to point out that Heather is underdog against Diyas because of her mediocre current form, but take the form away and they are both probably mid ranking players for the tournament and there should not be a lot to choose between them.

Anyway I believe class is more important than form and I still have hopes of Jo Ko and Heather in their first round matches.