WTA: Indian Wells:Caroline Garcia- Svetlana Kuznetsova

 

I have great respect for Svetlana Kuznetsova both on and off court and I rarely rush to oppose her. However, she does have some very strange form in these desert tournaments in recent years, which is odd as she made back to back finals here in 2007-08, but is 5-8 coming into this season at Indian Wells in the  subsequent eight years and,  did not play Dubai this year after losing to Julia Goerges , sorry, but a player not on the same planet in terms of ability , 0 &1 in a simply awful performance in 2016. She has posted two wins this last week, but defeats of Johanna Larsson and veteran Roberta Vinci do not prove much and Kuzzy lost her way big time in the second set of the latter and I expect her to be asked more questions today.
 

Caroline Garcia (pictured) is an enigma, Andy Murray named her as a future world number one when she was a teenager, the Frenchwoman has all the ability to fulfill that prophecy and an all court game that is still rare amongst all but the best. Progress has been slow over the intervening six years, but she is only 23yo and now up to #22 (live number), which is her highest ever ranking, she has plenty of big wins over top ranked players, but lacks consistency and can lose to almost anyone and we saw the full extent of those inconsistencies in her win over Johanna Konta on Sunday. A stubborn approach which saw her standing inside the baseline for almost every serve from the British player and she barely made a return in losing the first set 6-3 and that scoreline was , to be honest, flattering to her. But eventually winning with a degree of comfort.
 

She is still very much a work in progress, but might just be a late developer and this could be her breakthrough season, she has the ability and build. Broad shouldered and strong, she strikes quite an intimidating figure, especially when receiving and looks bigger than 1.77m . These two are 1-1 h2h on hardcourts, are these hardcourts (?), the surface has been slowed to counteract how quickly the balls move through the air here and that makes Indian Wells unlike any other hardcourt event. Anyway, Garcia won in the Australian Open, their meeting in Miami at this time of last year (Miami is next up) went to a third set tie breaker.

 

1.25 units Caroline Garcia to beat Svetlana Kuznetsova 2.55 Pinnacle/Sportmarket Pro.