French Open Women - Prosperous pairing to continue success story

Talented Tandems

While we head into the last bunch of second round matches in singles tomorrow, the Roland Garros doubles competitions also started today. On the women's side, we have the usual suspects like Hsieh/Strycova, Babos/Mladenovic, Mertens/Sabalenka and Krejcikova/Siniakova as the top seeds. Besides them, there are some more interesting teams and one of the hottest is the American-Brazilian duo of Hayley Carter and Luisa Stefani. They started playing together regularly one year ago at the WTA International event in Seoul and made the final straight away. Since teaming up, their only way is up and they won 5 titles in the 16 tournaments they entered. Currently, they are about to crack the top 30 of the doubles rankings for the first time in their careers.

After reaching the quarterfinal at the US Open, they played two warmup tournaments in the lead up to Roland Garros. In both events, they only lost to the eventual winners - Hsieh/Strycova in the semifinal of Rome and Melichar/Schuurs in the final of Strasbourg. In tomorrow's first round match, they will face the team of Aliona Bolsova Zadoinov and Ulrikke Eikeri, who got into the draw as alternates since Krunic and Marozava have withdrawn.

Prosperous Pairing vs. Appropriated Alternates

Eikeri is a solid doubles player, but she swaps between WTA and ITF tournaments weekly and her usual home before the pandemic was the ITF tour. The Norwegian is currently ranked #134 in the world. Her partner doesn't attach great importance to her doubles career. Bolsova only played 16 doubles matches last year and this is her first one after the restart. Talking of first times, Bolsova and Eikeri also never played together before. Chemistry is highly relevant when it comes to tennis doubles and I'm not sure how motivated Bolsova will be after having lost her singles first round match already.

Bookmakers opened Carter/Stefani as the rightful favorites, but I still think value can be found on lower odds in doubles matches. With their recent success, the rising duo should be motivated to go on another good run here in Paris. The odds on them to win in straight sets are 1.80 and it's hard for me to see Bolsova/Eikeri win a set unless they click immediately.