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Tennis betting tips: Wimbledon day 11
1.5pts Aryna Sabelenka to serve the most aces v Amanda Anisimova at 5/4 (Unibet, BetMGM, Virgin Bet)
1pt Iga Swiatek to beat Belinda Bencic 2-0 at 22/25 (Unibet, BetMGM, Virgin Bet)
Aryna Sabalenka v Amanda Anisimova (1330 BST)
Sabalenka was favourite at the start of this tournament and has remained the favourite throughout.
However, I’m pretty sure we’ve not seen her at her best and she teetered on the brink of disaster in her quarter-final, needing to come from a break down in the final set to defeat Laura Siegemund.
She just doesn’t appear as confident as on the other surfaces and her strong serve probably isn’t dominating as much as you’d expect it to.
Holding 79% of the time is far from bad but it’s down on her opponent here (84%) while in the other semi-final, Iga Swiatek has held in 88% of her service games at the tournament.
It must also be a concern to anyone considering backing the Belarusian at 2/5 that she’s 5-3 down on the head-to-head, albeit Sabalenka has won three of the last four, including a 7-5 6-3 success at Roland Garros only a few weeks ago.
Expect some heavy hitting from both sides of the net – this won’t be the sort of match Sabalenka faced on Tuesday when Siegemund threw in lots of slices and slower balls to disrupt the world number one’s rhythm.
I’d probably still expect Sabalenka to prevail in such a battle, although I do think Anisimova can keep this tight.
She’s 5/6 to win a set and gets a 3.5-game start on the handicap, which is probably about right.
For something bigger, Sabalenka to win 2-1 tempting at 3/1.
However, my bet on this contest comes in the aces market which has served us well over the past couple of days.
Sabalenka is the slight underdog to serve the most and I don’t think that’s right.
She out-aced Anisimova 11-3 on the slow clay of Roland Garros recently and has now served the most aces in their last six encounters.
So, maybe the market is based on the tournament so far? Well, perhaps it is, but even here Anisimova has only a very small advantage – she’s served 0.38 aces per game to Sabalenka’s 0.36.
In any case, the head-to-head should be given more weight – long-term readers will know this is a long-standing theory of mine.
Sabalenka gets the nod at 5/4.
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Belinda Bencic v Iga Swiatek (after SF1)
Less than a year after her return to the tour following the birth of her daughter, Bencic is back in a Grand Slam semi-final.
That’s a terrific achievement but if she is going to reach her maiden final then she’s going to have to do something special here.
Swiatek is serving great – 88% of service games have been won with only one set lost at the tournament so far (to Caty McNally). Also breaking 44% of the time, the Pole looks to be more comfortable on the grass this year.
She’s spoken about having worked on her movement on the grass – and having fast hands – and such work may pay off here.
Bencic will look to take the ball early – the data showed she did that well against Mirra Andreeva in the last round, with her court position regularly being close to the baseline.
However, I felt Andreeva was too passive at times in that contest and I’d expect Swiatek to look to make the big first strikes.
She’s excellent at changing the direction of the ball and pushing players into the corners of the court and if she’s able to do that here, I doubt Bencic will cope well enough in terms of defence.
Given she’s serving so well, Swiatek should be able to get into those first-strike positions and my view is she’ll emerge victorious from this.
Swaitek leads the head-to-head 3-1, their last meeting coming here at Wimbledon two years ago which was won by the Pole. It was also their most recent match.
I just like the potential match-up here and will back Swiatek to win in straight sets at just shy of evens.
One other price which stood out was the 6/1 about Bencic serving the most aces given that’s occurred in three of those four previous encounters.
However, the Swiss’ ace numbers as a mother haven’t been as good as pre-pregnancy. Throw in Swiatek’s well-oiled serve and it’s not a price I can bring myself to back on this occasion.