On May 16, Karolina Pliskova was crushed 6-0 6-0 in the final of the Italian Open in Rome by Iga Swiatek.
Less than two months later she’ll play for the Wimbledon title. It has been quite a turnaround.
Pliskova has long been thought of as a player with the potential to produce this sort of run at Wimbledon, her huge first serve being the primary reason.
However, a string of early exits has plagued the former world number one over the years, her movement often highlighted as a reason why.
The serve has certainly fired over the past fortnight – she’s been broken only four times in the tournament and in her semi-final against Aryna Sabalenka faced just the one break point.
Significantly, her movement looks to have improved too – perhaps working with the highly-successful coach Sascha Bajin has helped on that front – and frankly I’m a little surprised to see her up at north of 2/1 to win this final.
As for the sub-markets, I like the big prices on offer you can get when you BACK A TIE-BREAK IN THE MATCH.
Serve will have a big part to play in this match. I’ve already mentioned Pliskova’s impressive service stats but Barty has also been strong on serve.
She’s been broken 11 times in 13 sets at the tournament which isn’t bad and notably dropped her delivery only once in her semi-final win over Angelique Kerber.
The thing I really like about the potential for breakers is the fact they’ve occurred pretty often in previous encounters between these two.
Four of the seven have featured a tie-break (including both matches on grass) with a first-set breaker occurring on two occasions.
Yet you can get 9/4 about a tie-break in Saturday’s final, and 5/1 for A TIE-BREAK IN THE OPENING SET.
Both look worth a small nibble.
Posted at 1950 BST (09/07/21)
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