The Brazil Cup tennis tournament progresses into the quarterfinals and so do our tennis picks. What’s notable about the eight second-round matches which took place on Tuesday is that they were all decided in straight sets. Very few matches even got to a tiebreaker or even needed seven games in one of the two sets. The winners featured six of the top eight seeds. One of the other winners was a straight-set winner who knocked out the top seed, Jelena Jankovic.
Looking back to our tennis picks on the day, it wasn’t a very productive day for us as we went 1-2 with our selections. We did cash with Monica Puig, who really had no problems with Olga Savchuk. Savchuk was only able to win four games in total. However, we did take a couple of losses, one of which was the aforementioned Jankovic. She fell in straight sets to Ana Bogdan. Lastly, we were also wrong betting against Nao Hibino as she ousted Veronica Cepedes in straight sets.
It all raises the question of whether this is going to be a tournament for the best players, or if the slightly lower seeds are going to pull small upsets on Wednesday. Here are our tennis picks for the day:
Naomi Osaka vs. Monica Puig
Puig and Osaka both steamrolled through their matches on a day when every winner avoided a long, protracted, three-set struggle. The betting calculus is not going to be that different in any of the matches on Wednesday’s schedule. With all players winning with the same level of relative ease, it’s not as though any prediction can be made based on differences in rest, fitness, mental fatigue, scheduling, or other similar considerations. Those are really out of play. What will matter is who’s better – that’s a measurement of where players stand in the world rankings, but it’s also a product of the caliber of player each winner defeated in the previous round.
In this case, the best test seems to be the measurement of each player. We talked the other day, before the second round, about Puig likely needing clay to stabilize her game, and probably being able to achieve what she wanted on this surface after struggling on hardcourts in the middle of July in Washington and Montreal. The fact that Puig moved smoothly through her second-round match does nothing to derail this line of thinking. Osaka is a seeded player, but Puig, on clay, deserves the benefit of the doubt. Take Puig with your tennis picks in this one.
Pick: Puig in straight sets
Lyudmyla Kichenok vs. Ana Bogdan
This is a match in which it’s hard to pick a winner. Both players are unseeded and comparatively obscure. This is the one quarterfinal without a seeded player – the other three have seeded players. The tiebreaker, from a betting perspective, is that Bogdan beat top-seeded Jelena Jankovic in the previous round. She scored a much more impressive victory than anything Kichenok has been able to achieve in the first two rounds in Florianopolis, Brazil. Based on that reality, Bogdan deserves a slight edge, but no one should think this match will be a runaway in either direction. It’s probably going to be close, but take Bogdan with your tennis picks in this one.
Pick: Bogdan in three sets
Nao Hibino vs. Irina-Camelia Begu
This is a match in which Hibino should enter with confidence, having defeated a Paraguayan who was very comfortable on clay. However, Begu is even more at home on crushed red brick. She had a very good clay season, making the Rome semifinals before losing to Serena Williams. Begu has made some real forward strides as a tennis player this season, more than anything Hibino has done. On the year, she is 20-12 and is 6-4 on the hard courts. The clay courts are her best surface as she is 13-5 on the red material. However, she is still in good form overall, which is why Begu deserves to be the choice for your tennis picks in this showdown.
Pick: Begu in three sets
