WTA Parma Preview and Picks

History

Emilia-Romagna Open will be staged in Parma Italy for the 1st time for both Men and Women in consecutive weeks.   

Get all of BetQL's best bets! Dating back a full calendar year, our five-star (max-value) bets have won 61% of the time!

Favorites and Top Seeds

The event made a strong statement and boost their player field showing by able to attract both Williams sisters via Wild Cards. They join a relatively strong field which also include Petra Martic, Cori Gauff and Daria Kasatkina.

Serena returned to the tour in Rome after long layoff since Australian Open in February where she lost in the SF to Naomi Osaka.

She was looking up and down all match, mixing good plays with erratic ones as it was evident that she was far from her usual self and lost in 2 tight sets to last year’s French Open Semifinalist Nadia Podoroska.

Although she has won the French Open in 2015 and was runner up to Garbine Muguruza in 2016, she has been disappointing by playing on clay and haven’t passed 4th round since. It must be said that her clay participation has been limited to 1 tournament before the 2nd Grand Slam of the year, Rome as the preferred destination, and her runs have usually ended by giving walkovers because of various injuries.

Caroline Garcia, who no longer is trained by her father and instead with Gabriel Urpi from Nadal’s Academy, could be a tricky matchup for Serena coming in the 3rd round. The French has had a disappointing year, but a change to coaching could see her spike again in the right direction just like how she did it in the French Open last year defeating Kontaveit and Mertens as +250 underdog before bowing down to Svitolina.

17-year old Cori Gauff has made headlines in Rome reaching the Semifinals while scoring big upsets on the way with the defeats of Sakkari (+200) and Sabalenka (+300) and was fortunate to receive a retirement from Ashleigh Barty while being down 4-6,1-2.

Serena’s part of the draw is definitely interesting one, her sister Venus is there as well but she has been a shallow of herself, with losses to Zarina Diyas in Miami in March and Brady in Madrid in April and is questionable here with the last week late withdraw from Rome nursing a left knee injury.

Petra Martic highlights the bottom part of the draw as the #2 Seed and her collaboration with Francesca Schiavone started to produce fruit fast as I was expected and mentioned numerous times in my recent tournament previews. She lost in R1 in both Istanbul and Madrid but flourished in Rome scoring 4 top 60 wins including 3 of the 4 as an underdog and lost a close that the score suggest encounter to Karolina Pliskova.

I could easily see her making a deep run here and why not taking the title as her upside is definitely there and she peaks just in time for French Open.  

Play DFS? Be sure to get a 3-day free trial on RotoQL to check out our projections!

Underdogs and Dark Horses

Kaia Kanepi is always capable of surprises. When you think she is out of form or her results have been disappointing she comes firing and really love the underdog role in matches. Clay is not her favorite surface but of her huge groundstrokes start going I could see causing Gauff lot of trouble in R1.

Picks

Looking forward to a Caroline Garcia vs Petra Martic sort of final here as I still don’t see Serena up to speed and especially with her clay court form in recent years I believe it will take more time for the American to compete on high level and go deep on such surface and her draw is definitely challenging.