Jelena Ostapenko v Angelique Kerber Preview – July 12th, 2018
It has been a tournament of shocks in the Women’s Draw at Wimbledon this year, but despite all of the early falls for seeds, three of the four semi-finalists are all former Grand Slam champions. Jelena Ostapenko stunned the French Open field last year and while she had a disappointing time of things in her title defence at Roland Garros this season, the young Latvian looks to be playing pretty freely and without pressure on her.
From a mental toughness perspective, after crashing out of the French Open in the first round back in May, this has been a good showing from the youngster. She was a quarter finalist at Wimbledon last year so the threat was there. She is playing very well and powered her way through the early rounds and that fearless toughness that she has really come to the fore when she took out Dominika Cibulkova in the quarter finals in straight sets.
Jelena Ostapenko v Angelique Kerber Odds*
Angelique Kerber 4/7
Jelena Ostapenko 11/8
* (betting odds taken at 9:57 pm on July 11th, 2018)
The great thing about watching Ostapenko is that she just goes for things and doesn’t hold back. Naturally, that is not going to pay off all the time, but she looks to have a nice rhythm going at the moment. She hasn’t collected a WTA Singles title this year and only carried in a 14-13 match record for the season ahead of Wimbledon. But she is moving well and we are certainly going to back her to do enough in his game to provide a return on over 2.5 sets at bet365 for a quote of 11/8* (betting odds taken at 9:57 pm on July 11th, 2018).
Angelique Kerber has arguably had a tougher run to the semi-final stage at Wimbledon than her opponent has. She had a potentially tricky fourth-round match against Swiss star Belinda Bencic and then she was up against the rising young threat of Daria Kasatkina, who looks like a future Grand Slam champion if ever there was one in the game at the moment. But Kerber has held herself steady and not only that, she has made it this far with dropping just the one set which was back in the second round.
Like Ostapenko, Kerber is a former Grand Slam champion having won the 2016 Australian Open and the US Open the same year. She is in somewhat familiar territory here as she was a finalist at Wimbledon 2016 but lost out to Serena Williams. There could well be a rematch coming of that final from two years ago. This is Kerber’s third semi-final at Wimbledon with a W1 D1 record from her previous two visits and with deep runs at this year’s Australian and French Open she is carrying form. She has taken a WTA Singles title this year as well.
Head to head
This will be the first-ever meeting between Osteopenia and Kerber
Ostapenko v Kerber Prediction
We can only see this being a pretty tight and tough scrap. Ostapenko likes to step up and get on the front foot, while Kerber has a great defence. We saw plenty of that in holding off the big-hitting Kasatkina in the last round and Kerber is going to have to find that defence from the off.
Just because of the extra experience that Kerber has, and with a couple of impressive performances from her in the last round, we are going with a Kerber 2-1 in the set betting for 11/4 odds* (betting odds taken at 9:57 pm on July 11th, 2018)
