Varvara Gracheva vs Selena Janicijevic Prediction & Betting Tips - Strasbourg, France

Prediction published on 23/05/2023, 12:53  by Steve Ashfield | Modified on 24/05/2023 at 03:30 in Tennis Predictions

Sixth seeded Varvara Gracheva bids to reach the Strasbourg Open quarter finals. To do so the Russian needs to beat unseeded French player Selena Janicjevic. The winner will have a last eight match against either wild card Elina Svitolina or lucky loser Erin Routliffe. There are eight seeds in this tournament but only half are remaining. That list includes Magda Linette who is the top seed in this Stasbourg Open. Gracheva began this tournament ranked 44th in the world after begiining the year 100th. Gracheva is up a place in the live rankings equalling her career high.. A win in this match will take her up to 41st. The 22-year-old has reached one final this year, losing to Marta Kostyuk in the ATX Open. There have been some other good hard court performances too so that bodes well for the future. On clay, Gracheva has had some struggles but improved in her last tournament. That was a WTA 125 event in Paris where she reached the semi-final. 

Selena Janicjevic started this Strasbourg Open ranked 188th but is 176th in the live rankings. The French player has a career high of 171st and will beat that if causing a surprise here. Janicjevic made it through qualifying to get to the first round of the Australian Open in January. Since then she's mostly played on the ITF Tour but had a run of five straight losses until the clay season began. That's her best surface and in April, she won an ITF tournament in Colombia. That was followed by a run to the last four of an ITF clay court tournament held in Switzerland before losing to a player ranked outside the top 250. Four of her next five matches were lost but it's gone better in Strasbourg. The 20-year-old was due to play in the qualifying rounds but was moved to the main draw after withdrawals. That paid off for her with a win over Oceane Dodin but she had to come from a set down. We go for Gracheva to get the win here.