Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova vs Natalia Vikhlyantseva Tennis Prediction
Pavlyuchenkova, the favorite to move into the last eight stage, defeated Vikhlyantseva when they met in the second round of 2017 Australian Open, 6-2 6-2, in an hour and 17 minutes. However, since then she has gone 1-3 against her compatriots.
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova News
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova gets her season’s first straight-set win as she demolishes Tatjana Maria in 49 minutes with a perfect score of 6-0 6-0 in the first round of Internationaux de Strasbourg. The Russian had never delivered this scoreline on tour before.
Pavlyuchenkova had won four matches from the first nine tournaments of the season. It includes a quarterfinal at Stuttgart, when she defeated Keys and Muguruza (retired, first top 10 win since April 2017), but lost to Kontaveit in two hours and 55 minutes.
The former world #13 had an excellent season in 2017, claiming three Internationals titles at Monterrey (d. #1 Kerber), Rabat (clay, d. Schiavone) and Hong Kong (d. Gavrilova). These trophies enabled her to end the season in top 15 for the first time in her career.
Natalia Vikhlyantseva News
Natalia Vikhlyantseva gets away with a straight-set win over #236 Tereza Mrdeza after the Croat was able to drag the match to a second set tiebreak (6-3 7-6). The world #81, who hit 34 winners compared to Mrdeza’s three, also committed a negating 35 unforced errors.
This is an improvement on her debut stay last year, when she lost to local wildcard #223 Amandine Hesse, 6-4 6-4. Vikhlyantseva, the winner of 2017 ‘s-Hertogenbosch and semifinalist at Moscow and St. Petersburg, is bidding for her first WTA quarterfinal on clay.
Tennis Prediction: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
Odds: 1.70
