Play of the Day: Lesia Tsurenko vs. Katerina Siniakova, Wimbledon

Presuming the match happens, my favorite play of a match scheduled for Thursday is for Katerina Siniakova to defeat Lesia Tsurenko. I had Siniakova to get by Qinwen Zheng in her opening-round match and I didn’t see anything there that has me thinking she’ll lose anytime soon. The Czech is playing some great tennis right now, and it doesn't hurt that she got fortunate with her draw.

The grass-court "season" is only a few weeks long, so you never really have a great sample size to draw on for this surface. But Siniakova is an impressive 6-1 in seven grass matches this season, and she comes into Wimbledon after having won a title in Bad Homburg. Her confidence should be through the roof, while Tsurenko hasn’t done much of anything on this surface in 2023. She lost to Dayana Yastremska in her first match in Birmingham a few weeks ago, and then needed three sets to defeat Claire Liu in the first round at Wimbledon. But that’s a total of two matches played on the grass.

I also believe Siniakova is going to break serve regularly. It’s a lot tougher to break on grass, but Tsurenko’s hold percentage is a miserable 54.8% at the WTA level this season. That is remarkably low. The Czech is one of the better returners in the women’s game, so she’ll dig in and make Tsurenko work for absolutely everything.

If Siniakova ends up serving well herself, this could turn into a lopsided match. The only thing that might be standing in her way is her health. Siniakova needed to receive treatment on her hip more than once in her win over Zheng, so it’ll be interesting to see how she holds up physically.

Bet: Siniakova ML (-135)