WTA Prague 2021 Preview and Picks
Favorites, top seeds, and dark horses to watch
History
Tournament started off with an ITF one from 2010 but since 2015 was rebranded to a WTA International series one.
This will be first year when the event will be played on outdoor hard-court surface replacing the clay courts.
A bit irrelevant now with the surface change, but Simona Halep defeated Elise Mertens in the final last year, both players are not making a return to defend the points.
Favorites and Dark Horses
Petra Kvitova is the top seed and the deserving favorite to win the title in her home country. She will use the event to gain some confidence and match play on the surface that it will be used in the Tokyo Olympics where she will participate as well.
Kvitova is 64-13 in her home country with 5.1% ROI and has won the clay court event in 2018 dropping only a set on her way. The Czech will look to get some confidence back as Wimbledon’s loss to Sloane Stephens in R1 as a -450 favorite was unexpected and on surface that she adores and won her only 2 Grand Slam titles on. Petra has underperformed this year with only 19-11 record and negative ROI due to some lopsided losses as a huge favorite.
Marie Bouzkova, who is Petra’s, projected Semifinal opponent offers some value as she has been quite good on hard courts, but those accomplishments have come outside of Europe and looks like the one that has a bit more potential to cause an upset in the top part of the draw comparing her with the rest of the subpar field.
French Open champion Brabora Krejcikova is the 2nd seed and favorite come out of the bottom part of the draw. Her slice is just so good that should give her a chance in basically every surface you can think of. Throwing that she is 11-6 on hard court this year with a narrowly lost final in Dubai to Garbine Muguruza and 43-24 playing at home with very well +10.6% ROI she should be able to cruise in a weak field where nobody actually is worth mentioning and offers any sort of form coming in either w/l or surface wise.
Picks
As mentioned before Petra and Krejcikova should cruise all the way to the final where an interesting battle could arise and in which Barbora will carry the most value due to her style of play which goes around using lot of slices and given the Kvitova height could prove costly for her in a close and long matchup.
