French Open Women's Day Four Tips: Siniakova a false underdog against Pavlyuchenkova

French Open Women's Day Four Tips: Siniakova a false underdog against Pavlyuchenkova

Dan Weston enjoyed a superb winner with his French Open tips on Tuesday and looks to have found some value as he aims for consecutive winning bets at Roland Garros..

Tauson announces herself on the big stage

Where do we even start? There can be no other place - yesterday's winning tip, Clara Tauson. As regular readers may have been aware, we were forced to wait until day three to get our recommendation of the round, waiting for the Danish qualifier to play her first-round match against Jennifer Brady.

While there were concerns about Tauson freezing on the big stage - this was her first Grand Slam main draw match - there was little to be worried about as she took an early break lead and got the job done in the opening set in just under 50 minutes. Brady, who came into the match in stunning form on hard courts, fought back to take the second set, but this was just the introduction to the drama. Both players had match points - Brady had two with Tauson serving at *5-6 15-40, but then Tauson missed three chances on her own serve to get broken at *7-6. To her credit, the Dane broke Brady back to give her a further chance to serve it out, and she did at the second opportunity to give us a superb underdog winner.

Pliskova struggles as Rybakina thrives

In other matches, Karolina Pliskova came into the tournament with much to prove given injury doubts, and she hardly gave a ringing endorsement of her chances of making the latter stages with a tight three-set win over the Egyptian qualifier, Mayar Sherif. Our main outright, Elena Rybakina, eased into round two with a 6-0 6-3 win over Sorana Cirstea, while Sofia Kenin is another one with much to prove currently, struggling past Ludmilla Samsonova.

Moving on to today's schedule, there's a couple of spots which I like, to some extent. First of all, even with injury doubts, Kiki Bertens looks very big at 1.42 against Sara Errani. Bertens skipped the entire hard court season after the tour resumed with this tournament in mind, but unfortunately retired in her previous tournament - if she's at all fit, I'd expect her to get the better of the weak-serving Italian without much fuss.

Siniakova looks a false underdog for Pav clash

Katerina Siniakova also looks pretty generously priced as a 2.30 underdog against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. I actually make her around a 1.80 favourite for this. Siniakova has done ok in the clay warm-up events, beating Angelique Kerber in Rome and Ekaterina Alexandrova and Bernarda Pera in Strasbourg, before losing a three-set quarter-final against Aryna Sabalenka - she has exhibited a reasonable level so far in the small sample of clay events we have to go on.

Pavlyuchenkova tends to do her best work in quicker conditions, and I'm unconvinced that she's going to like the slow clay that she's going to get here. She has quite a serve-orientated dynamic and has done her best work on indoor hard in her career - much quicker conditions than she is likely to find in Paris. Siniakova is our pick to make round three.

Krejcikova also looking some value for all-Czech match

Another player I felt was generously priced was Barbora Krejcikova as a 2.22 underdog for her all-Czech clash against Barbora Strycova - she's simply the better clay courter by a reasonable distance, based on my numbers.

The only concern here was that Krejcikova withdrew last week in advance of her second round match against Grace Min in the Prerov ITF event. It may well have been a precaution, but it's perhaps a concern. In normal circumstances, I'd expect Krejcikova to be a solid favourite against the 34-year-old veteran, Strycova, who has uninspiring clay numbers in general.

Halep and Azarenka among those in action

We also see a number of big names in action, with Simona Halep a heavy favourite to go six from six against fellow Romanian, Irina Begu, while Markia Sakkari and Victoria Azarenka are similarly priced for their round two matches. Azarenka looks a bit short at 1.11 against Anna Schmiedlova, who is a capable clay-courter, but Azarenka is on such a rich run of form. The aforementioned Alexandrova - another one who will prefer much quicker conditions - also looks short at 1.38 against Astra Sharma.