This is another preview that I alluded to in Episode 5 of Eat Sleep Tennis, with a preference towards another Australian who hasn’t spent the last couple of weeks in hotel quarantine.
This looks to be a horror match-up for a first round for Viktoria Kuzmova, who just really did struggle in the back end of 2020. She closed out the year with six consecutive straight set losses, and looked to be a shell of her former self. She has a lot of potential in her game, however for me to back her in any capacity I need to see a body of work that suggests there is the consistency in her game. Against a player such as Gavrilova, Kuzmova will be required to really force the issue given the number of shots her opponent will retrieve across the course of the match.
Unless there is a significant turnaround in form from Kuzmova coming out of hotel quarantine, the appeal is in the price of Gavrilova at the game handicap. Gavrilova did her own hotel quarantine a couple of months ago and has put together a very solid training block leading into the Australian summer of tennis. With her ranking so low due to her injury-enforced layoff, Gavrilova will need to capitalise on every opportunity handed to her early this year to boost that ranking, and that starts today.
The handicap is sitting around the 4.0 game handicap, however I am happy to push that to 4.5 games for odds of $2.00
Suggested Bet
2 units Gavrilova -4.5 games vs Kuzmova at $2.00 (+100) at Bet365 (note $2.10+ available elsewhere)