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Tennis Purist

The Tennis Purist - Pete - has been a full time tennis trader on Betfair since May 2012. Pete uses his own modelling platform to analyse data and statistics from the ATP, WTA and Challenger Tour circuits, in order to execute upon profitable trading opportunities pre-match and in-play.

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It’s Quarter Finals day at the Aegon classic, Birmingham, England, and we are going to shift out focus to the match between French world number 12, Kristina Mladenovic and the returning Czech world number 16, Petra Kvitova.

Previous Meetings:

These two have met three times, with Kvitova leading the head to head 2-1. All of their previous matches have been on hard courts, and all have been won in straight sets. Their last meeting was back in 2015 in the Fed Cup, Kvitova coming through 6-3 6-4. Mladenovic played in Hertogenbosch, Holland last week, losing to Lesia Tsurenko in the Quarter Finals. This is Kvitova’s first tournament on the grass, and only her fifth match of the year, since returning to the Tour having surgery on her injured hand. This is the Czech’s favourite surface though, and we all remember her winning Wimbledon back in 2014…

Aegon Classic Results So Far…

Mladenovic is yet to drop a set this week, beating Ying-Ying Duan 6-3 7-6 in Round 1 and Shuai Zhang in Round 2 yesterday 6-4 7-6 in what was a tight encounter.

Kvitova is also yet to drop a set, she opened up by beating Tereza Smitkova 6-2 6-3 in Round 1, before hammering home favourite, Naomi Broady 6-2 6-2 in Round 2.

Kvitova has certainly looked the more convincing of the two players this week, Mladenovic still look slightly awkward on the grass, struggling at time with her movement and timing of the ball.

Serving Stats:

Mladenovic’s recent grass court mean serving stats look like this, she’s won 62% of her service points and held serve 76% of the time.

Kvitova’s recent grass court mean serving stats look like this, she’s won 76% of his service points and held serve 100% of the time.

Both have big serves, Kvitova’s lefty slice is very akin to Feliciano Lopez’ and is extremely awkward to deal with on the grass. These slice serves of the Czech will be going out to Mladenovic’s backhand side, which i think will earn her plenty of free points today. Mladenovic will be looking for a high first serve % today, and she’ll be hoping that she is able to reduce the number of double faults she’s often guilty of.

Returning Stats:

Mladenovic’s recent grass court mean returning stats look like this, she’s won 44% of her return points, 46% of her break points and opponents have held 68% of the time against her.

Kvitova’s recent grass court mean returning stats look like this, she’s won 48% of her return points, 39% of her break points and opponents have held 56% of the time against her.

Kvitova has been returning great this week, she will look to attack Mladenovic’s second serve with aggression, and if she can keep her break point conversion % high I think she stands a great chance of breaking serve on a number of occasions today. Mladenovic will not have time to run around her backhand to return the Kvitova serve today, so she will need to find a way to improve her consistency and depth on the return in order to stand a chance today.

Groundstrokes:

Both are attacking players, Mladenovic’s money shot is her forehand, with the backhand certainly being the weaker of the two sides. Kvitova hits big forehands and backhands, and will, like Mladnovic hit the ball hard and flat from the back of the court. Kvitova is the more comfortable mover on grass, and the slightly better defender of the two.I think Kvitova’s game plan will be simple, go hard into the Mladenovic backhand, look to get a defensive chipped return and then put away the easy mid-court ball, I think this is a play we will see time and time again today.

Summary:

This should be an entertaining match between two very attacking players. I think Kvitova’s game is perfect for the grass, and she seems so ‘at home’ on this surface, and I think you can see her confidence is growing match by match. As you can probably guess, I’m yet to be convinced by Mladenovic on this surface, I think she struggles to move comfortably and she doesn’t get the time on the ball that she prefers. I also think she’ll really struggle to return that swinging Kvitova serve out to her backhand side, and I would be surprised if we didn’t see 70%+ of the Czech’s serves out to that wing. All of these things considered I’m confident of a Kvitova win here, quite possibly in straight sets, with maybe one or two breaks of serve in each.