betprepare.com

Sabalenka has only one match in her career against a Top 50 player. It was against Zhang on hardcourt last year (she was 24th at the time in the world) where she lost with six games of difference. Zhang later won the title, but she played a TB against Kumkhum, Galfi in the finals almost won the match against her, and nothing less was expected. This year Sabalenka lost with six games to Vekic indoors, she lost to Liu as the favorite. Vekic beat her last year indoors with eight games of difference in three sets. Mitu also with eight in two, Kulichkova wtih seven, also in two. One Christie with four games indoors (she was Top 300 for a short time). Hugenkamp beat her with five games in three sets on clay, Soler also on clay in three with seven. Minella on hardcourt with four, Rodionova with 10. So, surfaces changed, styles and the strength of opponents, but one thing didn't: Sabalenka's heavy defeats against at least a bit stronger opponents. Yes, she beat Rodina and Peng last season, but both had a lot of amplitudes in their performances last year. Except for Zhang, no other player can fit into the same sentence with Bertens. Yes, Peng could, but Peng is close to her maximum which was not the case last year.

Bertens's record this and last year in covering handicaps is 35-14 of 4.5 games when her wins are in question. And eight times she won a match with four games of difference, and four times with five. Let's look against whom she didn't cover the handicap and at what point. Six times she didn't cover the handicap against Top 30 players, four times in moments when she was outside of Top 100, and against Goerges, Barthel and Paszek who can stand up to everyone on the Tour when they're in the mood. There's one match left. With four games of difference Beck won after a series of seven defeats (the German has two indoor WTA titles + another finals in her career).

A good alternative to this bet is the game under, despite this being an indoor match. In winning on the margin of 20.5 games, Bertens's record is 33-16. She went over the margin against most of the earlier mentioned players at times when she was out of Top 100 (or, for instance, against Pavlyuchenkova, Putintseva who are Top players). But, she left Allertova, Schmiedlova, Beck, Garcia, Kuznetsova and Makarova under this margin last year indoors.

I'm convinced that such offs on Bertens is merely due to her start of the season. It wasn't great, but she lost to Davis and Mertens who later won the title, to Beck who can be very uncomfortable indoors, and to Lepchenko who was Top 20 and who can always surprise. Sabalenka showed last year, and this one too, that she's not capable of doing that.