Fresh from landing an 11/1 winner, Andy Schooler previews Thursday’s women’s semi-finals at the French Open, where a new Grand Slam champion is now guaranteed.
French Open betting tips: Daily best bets
1pt Diana Shnaider (-2.5) to beat Maja Chwalinska on the game handicap at 4/5 (BOYLE Sports)
Marta Kostyuk v Mirra Andreeva (1400 BST)
Kostyuk came through a tight encounter with Elina Svitolina on Tuesday to stretch her unbeaten claycourt streak to 17 matches.
That was a battle of arguably the two best players of the clay season so perhaps it’s right she is the slight favoruite for this first semi-final.
Personally, I was a little surprised and felt the prices might be the other way round here with Andreeva the player to have won both big matches and titles in the past. This will be Kostyuk’s first Grand Slam semi and we’ve seen many times before how nerves can play a part in such scenarios.
The Russian has held serve an impressive 87% of the time at this year’s Roland Garros – Kostyuk has been more vulnerable on her own serve with an equivalent figure of 71%.
However, Andreeva hasn’t enjoyed the same sort of success in previous meetings against Kostyuk, who is 2-0 up on the head-to-head.
Both meetings have come this season, too, the most relevant coming in Madrid only a few weeks ago when the Ukrainian won 6-3 7-5.
In each of those matches, Kostyuk broke serve four times. Once you discover such stats, you begin to see why the odds have been priced as they are.
As I wrote the other day, Andreeva is one of those players I don’t really ever seem to get a proper handle on and with there being decent reasons why she is the underdog here, I can leave this one alone.
Diana Shnaider v Maja Chwalinska (to follow)
Down 3-6 1-4 0-30* to the world number one on Wednesday, Shnaider’s French Open hopes looked dead and buried.
Yet here she is, a truly remarkable comeback seeing her into her first Grand Slam semi-final.
In truth, that result had more to do with Aryna Sabalenka’s total collapse; describing her tennis as error-strewn in the second half of that match doesn’t really do the job.
To give Shnaider credit, she certainly struck the ball well and ensured it was always there for Sabalenka to crush long or into the net and, frankly, that’s all that was required.
She did throw in a few winners, too, and her extra power is what I expect to win the day in this clash.
Chwalinska’s run from qualifying has been incredible – she’s only the second female qualifier in the Open Era to reach the French Open semis – but I’m not sure she’s faced as a big a hitter as Shnaider, who will also be the highest-ranked player the Pole has met at the tournament.
Anna Kalinskaya was disappointing against Chwalinska on Wednesday but, even so, still managed to break her serve five times.
I’d expect Shnaider, who has also taken out Madison Keys in Paris, to do a better job holding her own deal and I expect the Russian to win this, just as she did when the pair met back on clay in Istanbul in 2022.
She’s a best price of 4/7 – I’ll turn that into 4/5 by backing her to win while covering a handicap of 2.5 games.
Posted at 20:20 BST on 03/06/26
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