French Open Women's Semi-Final Tips

French Open Women's Semi-Final Tips: Trevisan capable of continuing shock run

Focus at the French Open is on the women's semi-finals which take place today, and yet again we are forced to ask the question - can anyone beat Iga Swiatek?

Swiatek with stratospheric data this season

Unbeaten in 33 matches, and only one set dropped in her last 11 matches as well - that's the recent record of Iga Swiatek, with her last defeat coming on hard court in February in Dubai against Jelena Ostapenko.

If that doesn't illustrate the task ahead of the remaining players in the French Open draw to beat Swiatek, then I'm not sure what will.

Let's throw in some more stratospheric data though, just in case you're somehow not convinced - Swiatek has won 64% of service points on clay this season, and 52% of return points, running at a combined 116%. When you consider that anything over 110% is elite level, as I keep saying recently, we have to go back to peak level Serena Williams to see these type of numbers.

Difficult to dispute Swiatek as huge favourite

Opponent Darya Kasatkina has impressed for sure to get to this stage, and has a particularly strong return game (50% return points won on clay this season) but I fear for her serve against Swiatek, who should be able to consistently pressure Kasatkina in that area.

The market agrees, pricing up the Pole as the overwhelming 1.12 favourite, and given the evidence above, it's extremely difficult to disagree with this line. It would be a major shock if Swiatek lost today, despite Kasatkina's quality.

Trevisan potential value against Gauff

Tuesday's winners Martina Trevisan and Cori Gauff battle in the other semi-final to make their first Slam final, and there's probably a feeling that this will be Trevisan's only chance to do so, while Gauff should have plenty of opportunities over the next decade.

The players were in different places then but it's interesting to see that Trevisan has won their only previous meeting, also at this venue in 2020 and was priced around the 3.80 mark pre-match - not far off today's line actually, which has her at 3.70. Gauff is the 1.36 favourite to make Saturday's final.

Despite Trevisan's impressive run to get to this stage, it's also fair to consider that the draw has opened up for her to some degree - she's still yet to play an opponent ranked inside the top 15. The same can be said of Gauff, but at least she has five wins over top 10 players so far in the early stages of her career, so probably has a higher ceiling in terms of pushing Swiatek in a potential final.

However, there's not much between the duo when looking at 12 month clay data - Gauff has the edge on serve and Trevisan on return - and again, the tournament data of the duo is also pretty evenly matched. Given this, there could be some value on the Italian here at current prices, and my lean today is for the clay-courter to create a surprise result this afternoon.