The 2019 WTA Tour continues with the Internationaux de Strasbourg taking place in France on Tuesday and Wednesday the 21st and 22nd of May 2019. Check out our full betting preview below.
WTA Tour 2019 | WTA International
Internationaux de Strasbourg | Strasbourg Tennis Club, (Outdoor Clay)
Selected Round of 16 Matches | 21-22 May 2019
Sam Stosur (7/4)
vs Dayana Yastremska (4/10)
This promises to be the definitive clash between youth and experience. 35-year-old veteran Samantha Stosur has been a consummate professional throughout her long career. The 2011 US Open Champion has enjoyed great longevity and sustained success on the double’s circuit: she won the Aussie Open earlier this year. Stosur’s single’s form has been largely unimpressive for some time now. She has battled to move beyond qualifying in most major events. Her last semi-final came in Mallorca last season. But the pugnacious Stosur is a battle-hardened veteran of clay-court tennis with an exceptional pedigree in this event. Stosur won this event in 2015 and 2017 and is a clay-court aficionado. She possesses a career 39-15 win-loss ratio at Roland Garros. That remarkably includes three semi-finals and an appearance in the 2010 French Open Final. She will be looking to harness all her court craft against her much younger opponent.
19-year-old Dayana Yastremska is at the forefront of a vanguard of Ukrainian talent in women’s tennis. She beat Pauline Parmentier in the opening round in resounding fashion and is looking to regain some traction. Yastremska won the Hua Hin Championships and has subsequently gone through a rough patch in form. She entered this event on the back of three consecutive losses. Yastremska really burst onto the scene with an extremely constructive end to 2018. She won the Hong Kong Open prior to reaching the semi-finals in Luxembourg. So it would appear that Yastremska is an up and coming hard-court specialist. But a closer look at her ITF career reveals some clay-court credentials. Of her six ITF Finals, four of them came on the sticky stuff, including three victories. Yastremska needs to find some consistency in her game and will be coming up against a familiar opponent.
These two actually met for the first time earlier this season. The Ukrainian beat Sam Stosur in her home Grand Slam, systematically undoing the Aussie in straight sets at Melbourne. So form and history seem to be on Yastremska’s side. But this is a venue that rewards familiarity and I could easily see the two-time champion Stosur turning back the clock in this one.
Zheng Saisai (5/4)
vs Marta Kostyuk (6/10)
25-year-old Chinese tennis ace Zheng Saisai will be hoping to exploit this depreciated field and force her way up the rankings. She has actually enjoyed a fairly constructive year after reaching a career-high single’s ranking of 38 in December. She reached the quarter-finals at the Hun Hin event and the Mexico Open. She also managed to capture the WTA 125K event in Anning. She made it into the main draw at Madrid, losing to Sloane Stephens in an epic round of 16 marathon. She really emerged from relative obscurity towards the end of last year. She reached the semi-finals in Washington and the final in Jiangxi. Saisai will enter this match as the favourite owing to her greater experience. But in Marta Kostyuk she will face one of the most exciting young prospects in women’s tennis.
Another in the emerging conveyor belt of Ukrainian tennis, 16-year-old Marta Kostyuk was a star on the girl’s junior circuit. She won the 2017 girls Aussie Open and would ultimately win the season-ending Junior Masters. But it was at last year’s Aussie Open that she really captured the imagination of the tennis world. She became the youngest player ever to reach the Grand Slam 3rd round, ultimately losing to Elina Svitolina. The youngster has been in two ITF finals, winning on the clay of Hungary last year. She is a real talent whose abilities will still take some time to fully germinate. She is still young and is finding her way on the pro tour. But she did reach the main draw of Madrid, losing to Karoline Pliskova in a ferocious three-set match.
This will unsurprisingly be the first meeting between these two. While Zheng may enter this as the more experienced player, I just have an inkling that the Ukrainian ingénue will have the power to dominate her Chinese opponent. It has been some time since her heroics in Australia last year and it’s about time for her talents to come to fruition.
Written by Damien Kayat for Hollywoodbets
