On Monday, Belinda Bencic and Ekaterina Alexandrova will play for a spot in the Wimbledon quarterfinals. Alexandrova comes into this match as the favorite—and it isn’t hard to figure out why. The Russian hasn’t dropped a set in London thus far, and she also happened to dismantle Bencic, 6-1, 6-2, in Bad Homburg two weeks ago.
However, the recent results appear to have led to a bit of an overreaction in the market. Now, there’s value in backing Bencic, so I’m taking the former world No. 4 to win a set. I’ll also take a smaller stab at Bencic moneyline at +173.
Alexandrova is rolling this grass-court season. The Russian is 8-2 and the losses were highly competitive battles with Elise Mertens and Iga Swiatek. Alexandrova is also a career-best 28-13 on the year, and that winning percentage of 68.3% easily clears her previous best of 64.7%. Her power game from the baseline has always overwhelmed opponents, but she has been a little sharper as both a server and a returner. That has helped Alexandrova take things to another level.