Young guns making an impact
We arrived at the quarterfinal stage of the first WTA event back in Palermo. Top seed Petra Martic is still in the tournament as she defeated qualifier Liudmila Samsonova in a battle that lasted two and a half hours yesterday. Once again, we saw some encouraging play from the young Italian-based Russian, who will be one to watch out for in the near future. Martic will now face Aliaksandra Sasnovich, who crushed Jasmine Paolini (and our hopes for a close match) in the previous round.
Talking of shattered hopes, Elisabetta Cocciaretto's breakout on WTA level came at the most inconvenient time for us as she destroyed our outright pick Donna Vekic 6-2 6-4 two days ago. Anyway, it is great to see her doing well already at the age of 19 and she is yet another youngster to watch. The young Italian will face #4 seed Anett Kontaveit today and I'm very keen to see if she can unnerve another big hitter in Kontaveit.
Ferro Future still alive
In the third quarterfinal, our remaining outright pick Fiona Ferro gets to face another Italian in 33-year-old Sara Errani who is playing some of her best tennis in years. That being said, I'm a little more concerned than the bookmakers who make the Frenchwoman an overwhelming -400 favorite. However, the 23-year-old made some progress herself and is slowly approaching the top 50 in the world. If she's able to continue her form, she should have enough power to overcome the pesky Italian, who also played some long matches here already.
Redline Roulette
Rounding off today's matches will be the third remaining seed in Dayana Yastremska and the third remaining Italian Camila Giorgi. Both players are striking the ball well so far this week and whether they continue to do so or not, we won't see too many long rallies in this one. With their ability to hit winners (and unforced errors) from almost everywhere, this might become a hit or miss match.
While Giorgi came back from a 3-6 1-2 deficit in her second round match against Kaja Juvan, Yastremska won pretty much straightforward. Her opponent Oceane Dodin had one of her best weeks on clay, but clearly prefers faster courts. So with both Yastremska and Giorgi being able to redline and dominate sets, I think this match should be closer than the odds suggest. The Italian crowd won't have as much of an impact during this pandemic, but I still have Giorgi winning this more than 40% of the time. Therefor, I take another risky shot and bet the Italian to advance to the semifinals at +175.
