Wimbledon Day Eight Women's Tips: Muchova's serve should help her edge Badosa

Wimbledon Day Eight Women's Tips: Muchova's serve should help her edge Badosa

Manic Monday sees all the fourth round women's singles matches at Wimbledon take place, and there's some facinating matches to discuss. Dan Weston returns to give his thoughts...

Barty strengthened at the top of the outright market

Ashleigh Barty's win on Saturday over Katerina Siniakova has strengthened the position of the Australian at the top of the outright market to 4.7, with two further players now in single-digit odds at the forefront of the market - Iga Swiatek, who is at 7.8 and Aryna Sabalenka, marginally further back at 8.4.

With all of the remaining 16 players left in the women's singles draw in action today, there is the potential for significant movement in that outright market, which will see half the current players still in the tournament eliminated today.

Barty faces an intriguing match against French Open winner Barbora Krejcikova, and is priced at 1.39 to get the win against the Czech, who quite incredibly, had never played a main draw grass court match at WTA level prior to this tournament. This looks about right to me based on hard court numbers, with my data suggesting Barty should be this reasonably strong favourite to progress.

Raducanu has a chance today but outright price is absurd

However, there are some spots which my model suggests are value, albeit with the caveat that we lack usable grass data. It wouldn't be a huge shock to me if Emma Raducanu continued her progress over Alja Tomljanovic today, with the home crowd likely to be fully behind the British player. Tomljanovic progressed past Jelena Ostapenko in round three in what was a bad-tempered encounter, and it will be interesting to see if she is fully focused today after the media attention which has stemmed from that.

Raducanu is 2.10 to get the win today, and amazingly, just 29.0 to lift the trophy. While this would make for a fantastic story, I also think it's the most absurd outright price since Lukas Rosol in 2012 after he shocked Rafa Nadal.

Kerber surprisingly priced against Gauff

It's interesting to note that Angelique Kerber at 19.0 is almost double the outright price of Cori Gauff 10.5 yet the match winner market in their clash today finds it tough to decide between the duo.

I quite like the chances of Kerber here at 2.16, with Gauff seemingly being priced on potential as opposed to current ability. Her numbers are decent but not spectacular this year, and the American has also benefited from a very weak draw to get to this stage.

Muchova should get the job done against Badosa

My preferred spot today, though, is Karolina Muchova at 1.62 for her match against Paula Badosa. Until this tournament, Badosa was renowned as a clay-courter, but the 30th seed has managed to get to week two, albeit against fairly mediocre opposition.

I think Muchova on grass is a huge step up today for Badosa.

The Czech player has already beaten several quality players in week one - Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Camila Giorgi, both of whom play well in quicker conditions - and her strong serve should ensure she holds relatively consistently against Badosa this afternoon. On hard court this year, Muchova has held serve almost 80% of the time, and on grass, this in theory should rise further and I think she should get the job done today.