Wimbledon Quarter-Final Women's Tips: Muchova again the selection

Wimbledon Quarter-Final Women's Tips: Muchova again the selection

The eight players left in the women's singles return today to play the quarter-finals. Our tennis columnist, Dan Weston, previews the day ahead...

Barty shortens as Swiatek and Gauff exit

Yesterday's fourth round matches at SW19 saw the exit of several of the players at the forefront of the women's singles outright market, with Iga Swiaek and Cori Gauff falling to Ons Jabeur and Angelique Kerber, respectively. We also saw the end of British wild card Emma Raducanu's campaign, with retirement forcing an early end to her match against Alja Tomljanovic.

With the eight exits from yesterday, implied percentage was always going to be needed to be redistributed to yesterday's winners in the outright market, and this has seen five players move into single-digit pricing. Ash Barty 3.2 leads the way, as she has done throughout the tournament, with Aryna Sabalenka 5.4 still second favourite but Kerber 6.8 now moving to third favourite following her victory over Gauff yesterday.

Pliskova takes on in-form Golubic

As there are just four matches on today's schedule, action gets under way a little later today at 13:00 UK time, with the first match taking place between Karolina Pliskova and Viktorija Golubic. There's over a 60 place ranking gap between the duo currently (although that will narrow following this tournament) and Pliskova, the higher ranked player, is trading at 1.48 at the time of writing, which looks not far from being out of line against an opponent who has now won eight from her last nine on grass after a mixed clay season.

Muchova's strong serve gives her edge over Kerber

The main value spot today, in my view, is Karolina Muchova as a 2.30 underdog for her meeting with Angelique Kerber. The big-serving Czech, Muchova, was our pick yesterday for her win over Paula Badosa, and I think she can continue this run against former winner Kerber.

Muchova's strong serve was again positive yesterday, winning 64% of service points and being broken twice in 11 service games (82% hold) and Kerber is going to have to play very well in order to put pressure on Muchova's serve today.

Kerber has really struggled this season prior to the grass events but is now nine unbeaten following a title in the Bad Homburg warm-up event.

However, Kerber has now played a lot of tennis of late including some fairly lengthy matches, which is unlikely to be of assistance to the 33-year-old here.

Considering the above, stats wise, and logic wise, Muchova is the play today.

Jabeur needing to continue strong form to defeat Sabalenka

In the two other semi-finals, second-favourite for the tournament Sabalenka is a marginal 1.80 favourite to get the better of Ons Jabeur, who has impressed to get to this stage with three-set fightback wins over Garbine Muguruza and Iga Swiatek to her name already. Jabeur also won the Birmingham warm-up event so comes into the match in strong grass-court form, which she will need to show again this afternoon if she is to defeat Sabalenka.

Finally, tournament favourite Barty is the strongest favourite today, at 1.19 to eliminate Ajla Tomljanovic, who of course defeated Emma Raducanu yesterday evening. It would be a pretty big shock if Barty was eliminated by her fellow Australian here, based on both market and model pricing.