The crowd supports their protégé..

The Filipinos who came out in large numbers ...

…and you’ll need strong nerves to come out on top here!

The public factor is real in this match, but it needs to be put into perspective. The support around Eala is massive, sometimes overwhelming. We saw it in the previous round: the umpire had to step in several times and Vekic was clearly affected mentally. That said, this advantage mainly works when the match is tight or when the opponent is doubting. In pure tennis terms, Eala is still an opportunistic player, able to feed off external energy and opponent errors. On the other hand, as soon as she has to dictate the game or sustain a high pace over time, the unforced errors creep in. She sometimes overplays her popularity, and her price seems to me to be partly built on this emotional context. Petra, in my opinion, shows a much more mature and higher tennis IQ.

On the other side, Marcinko comes in with very strong momentum, with only two losses in her last twenty matches. Her tennis is aggressive and straightforward. She showed it again against Osorio, in a tricky match where she was broken five times, lost the second set 6–0, but got through it mentally in the third. Osorio saved ten break points at 0–1 in the third set, proof of the rare intensity of the rallies on both sides. Down 6–5 in the third, Petra produced a very commanding break-back game despite more than two hours of play, before finally winning in the tie-break. A very nice match to watch.

From an odds perspective, the opening at 2.00 dropped until it made her the favorite at 1.80, before climbing back up to finish close to 2.40. A move that’s quite hard to understand, but all the better for us, as it becomes an interesting value, hoping for a closing around 2.45–2.50.