French Open Womens Semi Final Betting

Day twelve at Roland Garros sees the Semi Final matches between the final four players left in the Women’s tournament. Who will be playing in Saturday’s final? BetRepublic.com previews both matches here:

Elena Dementieva v Francesca Schiavone Tennis Betting:

The bookmakers are having a hard time determining who will be the player that progresses to the French Open final with both PaddyPower.com and William Hill having odds of 5/6 for both Dementieva and Schiavone to win the match. It looks like it’ll be a close match, but will it be the fifth or seventeenth seed that progresses to the final?

After a relatively easy route through the tournament, Dementieva came across Nadia Petrova in the Quarter Finals. Petrova had defeated Venus Williams in round four and started the Quarter Final match with great confidence and won the first set in an injury broken sixty-two minutes. From there, however, things went downhill for the nineteenth seed as Dementieva got into her stride and won the next two sets 6-2, 6-0 to book her Semi Final place. She will need to perform like she did in those final two sets to progress to the final, but will Dementieva be able to?

Schiavone is the first Grand Slam semi finalist from Italy since the Open era began and she has claimed this feat in style. She has beaten three seeded players on route to the final four, Na Li (11) in round three, Maria Kirilenko (30) in round four and Caroline Wozniacki (3) in the Quarters. More impressive than that is the fact that bar dropping her first set of the tournament she has won the following ten sets to reach the Semi Finals. She is clearly the player in the better form of the two, but can she reach the final?

This will be the eleventh meeting of the two players, with Dementieva holding a 6-4 advantage on the scorecard. Dementieva has won the last three encounters and Schiavone’s last victory against the Russian came in 2007. Also, they have met just once on clay with Dementieva emerging victorious. Despite this I feel that Schiavone will add another victory to her previous four wins against Dementieva as her form at Roland Garros has been exceptional so far. My money will be on Francesca Schiavone to beat Elena Dementieva at odds of 5/6.

Jelena Jankovic v Samantha Stosur Tennis Betting Tips:

After beating Justine Henin and Serena Williams in the last two rounds, it is unsurprising that Samantha Stosur is the favourite with William Hill at odds of 8/13 to reach the final of the French Open. My pre-tournament favourite Jelena Jankovic is available at 6/5. Who will be right, me or the bookies?

Of the two players Jankovic has had the easier route to this point in the tournament and has only had to defeat the twenty-third and twenty-seventh seeds in rounds three and four. Unsurprisingly she has dropped just the one set on the way to the final four and that came against Kaia Kanepi in the second round.

Stosur, on the other hand, has beaten the top seed in Serena Williams in the Quarter Finals and the four time winner of the French Open in Justine Henin in round four. Henin started off the stronger of the two in their match and won the first set 6-2 in thirty-two minutes before Stosur won the next two sets 6-1, 6-4 to book her place in the last eight of the competition. Filled with confidence from beating Henin she raced off into a 6-2, 5-3 lead before Serena came back and won the second set in a tie-breaker. The final set was nip and tuck until the very end when Stosur broke Williams at 7-6 and won the match 6-2, 6-7, 8-6 in what was an epic game. Can she carry on from there and book her place in the final?

These two players have met on four previous occasions and Jankovic has won three compared to Stosur’s single win. All four matches have been played on hard courts and they have met twice this year with the score tied at 1-1, with Stosur winning the last game in Miami. None of their four matches have gone to three sets, but I feel that this one will with Stosur in the form of her life and highly confident after her last two victories. Unfortunately for her I am sticking with my original prediction of Jankovic to win the title, so I’ll be backing her at odds of 6/5 to win this match. I’ll also be putting a small bet on Jankovic to win 2-1 @ 7/2 with PaddyPower.com.

BetRepublic.com Recommends:

•    Francesca Schiavone to beat Elena Dementieva @ 5/6

•    Jelena Jankovic to beat Samantha Stosur @ 6/5

•    Jelena Jankovic to win 2-1 @ 7/2