{"id":32110,"date":"2021-02-05T09:53:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T14:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=32110"},"modified":"2021-02-05T09:53:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T14:53:17","slug":"wta-gippsland-trophy-semifinal-predictions-osaka-mertens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/02\/05\/wta-gippsland-trophy-semifinal-predictions-osaka-mertens\/","title":{"rendered":"WTA Gippsland Trophy Semifinal Predictions Including Naomi Osaka vs Elise Mertens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The final four women at the WTA Gippsland Trophy have been determined. There was a cloud of uncertainty surrounding proceedings on Thursday, causing <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/02\/03\/australian-open-preparation-events-postponed-positive-covid-19-test\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">all quarterfinal matches to be postponed<\/a>. Tennis Australia, in consultation with WTA, have introduced a new scoring system in order to shorten matches and beat Sunday&#8217;s deadline of completing all warm-up events.<\/p>\n<p>Who will advance into Sunday&#8217;s final?<\/p>\n<h2>WTA Gippsland Trophy Semifinal Predictions<\/h2>\n<h4>Ekaterina Alexandrova vs Kaia Kanepi<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-head:<\/strong> first meeting at Tour level (Alexandrova leads 1-0 at ITF)<\/p>\n<p>Ekaterina Alexandrova demolished top seed Simona Halep 6-2 6-1 in exactly an hour in their quarterfinal match. The Romanian was visibly hampered by a back injury. She led 2-0 briefly, but only won one more game after that. A barrage of measured gorund strokes came off Alexandrova&#8217;s racket, as she converted five of ten break point chances. The Russian set up a meeting against World No.94 Kaia Kanepi.<\/p>\n<p>The Estonian benefitted from an extra day of rest following Karolina Muchova&#8217;s withdrawal due to an abdominal injury. But that may not necessarily be a good thing especially when you consider that players jetting in to Melbourne were subjected to a mandatory two-week quarantine. The new scoring system makes this a potential lottery if it goes into a 10-point third set tiebreak. But based on Alexandrova&#8217;s excellent win on Friday, she has wind in her sails.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Alexandrova in 3<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"n6MCAk5uRg9HjSzIBEBMAw\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1300471357\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'n6MCAk5uRg9HjSzIBEBMAw',sig:'ETWR4vEkQJ2tXp6WUur1p9nvyY_esk4aeoCRRsBqUHA=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1300471357',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Naomi Osaka vs Elise Mertens<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-head:<\/strong> Osaka 2-1 Mertens<\/p>\n<p>Naomi Osaka produced quite possibly her best performance of the week. She planted 22 winners to just 11 unforced errors (and won 79% of first serve points) to beat Irina-Camelia Begu 7-5 6-1. Excluding the Cincinnati Masters, Osaka hasn&#8217;t lost a completed match since a Fed Cup singles defeat to Sorribes Tormo last February. I expect her to keep up that unblemished record against Mertens. The Belgian nearly made a melee of her quarterfinal win over Svitolina, surrendering a second set in which she led 5-2. That doesn&#8217;t bode well especially against the second seed who is hitting top form at the right time.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Osaka in 2<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[pickup_prop id=&#8221;4651&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The final four women at the WTA Gippsland Trophy have been determined. There was a cloud of uncertainty surrounding proceedings on Thursday, causing all quarterfinal matches to be postponed. Tennis Australia, in consultation with WTA, have introduced a new scoring system in order to shorten matches and beat Sunday&#8217;s deadline of completing all warm-up events. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":23504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11519,69,4],"tags":[13864,4184,13947,1412,2007,476,8842,2373,2369,13663],"class_list":["post-32110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","category-predictions","category-wta","tag-2021-wta-gippsland-trophy","tag-ekaterina-alexandrova","tag-ekaterina-alexandrova-vs-kaia-kanepi-prediction","tag-elise-mertens","tag-kaia-kanepi","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-naomi-osaka-vs-elise-mertens-prediction","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions","tag-wta-gippsland-trophy-predictions"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}