The Pick, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook: Emma Raducanu vs. Camila Osorio, Washington

On Tuesday, world No. 67 Camila Osorio snapped a five-match losing streak with a win over 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin, who is now down to No. 416 in the rankings and has lost her last seven matches. That match in Washington, D.C. wasn’t all that different from the ones that NFL fans are used to seeing when the league sends struggling teams, like the Jacksonville Jaguars or New York Jets, overseas to play games in London. We knew it wasn’t going to be fun to watch, and we also know that you can’t take any positives from the winner.

Osorio will now face world No. 10 Emma Raducanu in the Citi Open’s round of 16. The 19-year-old is just 10-12 on the year, which isn’t what fans expected after capturing the US Open last year, unexpected as that was. However, Raducanu has won two of her last three matches, and she needed only an hour and 27 minutes to earn a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Louisa Chirico in her opening match in D.C. And while Osorio is coming off of a win of her own, she shouldn’t offer much more of a challenge than Chirico did against the Brit.

As long as Raducanu doesn’t have any extended stretches in which she racks up unforced errors, it’s hard to see this being anything but a straightforward victory for the teenager. While Raducanu is currently sporting a break percentage of 39.2% this season, which is absurdly good for a returner, Osorio’s hold percentage as a server is only 59.9% this year. That makes this a massive mismatch when the ball is on the Colombian’s racquet. Even with Raducanu not playing anything near her best tennis, it’s just hard to see how Osorio will find a way to win enough service games to keep this match competitive.

Raducanu will also have a significant advantage from the baseline when it comes to power, so she should be able to dictate the points in this match. Osorio is a good defender and will hunt down a lot of balls, but it’s hard to envision her coming out and hitting through Raducanu very much.

If there’s any reason to be hesitant about taking Raducanu in this match, it’s the fact that Osorio has played well on hard courts this year, while her opponent has not. But we know that the Brit’s game translates nicely to this surface, as evidenced by her run in New York in 2021. As long as she gets out of her own head and keeps this match simple, there’s no reason she shouldn’t win it comfortably.

The Pick: Raducanu To Win 2-0 (-105)