{"id":58355,"date":"2023-07-30T17:25:51","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T21:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=58355"},"modified":"2023-07-30T17:25:51","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T21:25:51","slug":"wta-washington-day-1-predictions-bencic-potapova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2023\/07\/30\/wta-washington-day-1-predictions-bencic-potapova\/","title":{"rendered":"WTA Washington Day 1 Predictions Including Belinda Bencic vs Anastasia Potapova"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Six first-round matches will be on the slate on Day 1 of the WTA Mubadala Citi Open in Washington. And frankly, we&#8217;ve got six matches of top-notch quality. Aside from the Wimbledon rematch between <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2023\/07\/30\/wta-washington-day-1-predictions-azarenka-svitolina\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Victoria Azarenka and Elina Svitolina<\/a>, we&#8217;ve got a two-time WTA champion in 2023, Belinda Bencic, facing one of the fastest-rising players on Tour in Anastasia Potapova. Who do you think will advance?<\/p>\n<h2>WTA Washington Day 1 Predictions<\/h2>\n<h4>Bianca Andreescu vs Marta Kostyuk<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-head:<\/strong> Andreescu 1-0 Kostyuk<\/p>\n<p>Marta Kostyuk&#8217;s win over Maria Sakkari at Wimbledon was the first top-1o win of her career. It&#8217;s the kind of result that could unlock her true potential as I genuinely feel she&#8217;s got the talent to rank a lot higher than 34. But she is making steady progress this season which is good to see. Andreescu has had an up-and-down year, and the goal right now has to be getting one of the top 32 seeds at the US Open.<\/p>\n<p>Andreescu is so invested in performing well in Canada next week, but it&#8217;s imperative she gets some hard court momentum in place in Washington. Andreescu and Kostyuk played a very strange match in Hua Hin quarterfinal earlier this season. The Canadian nearly squandered a 6-0 5-1 lead, but Kostyuk was poor during the week in Thailand and it was a minor miracle she even made it that far. Kostyuk has improved considerably since Hua Hin, but I can see her having trouble handling Andreescu&#8217;s skillset.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Andreescu in 3<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"hF1tG44xQWNG_n9s2cpa1A\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1249549862\" 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:'hF1tG44xQWNG_n9s2cpa1A',sig:'1PV3ZKmRG6lJA2pjEhQ7M-mT5PL9S2QAYku51fgyNIM=',w:'594px',h:'400px',items:'1249549862',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Sloane Stephens vs Lauren Davis<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-head:<\/strong> Stephens 2-2 Davis<\/p>\n<p>Lauren Davis struggled mightily in qualifying for Washington and needed three sets to take down a pair of her compatriots. One of those was Alana Smith, ranked outside the world&#8217;s Top 500. Stephens has enjoyed a resurgent season results-wise, winning 18 matches in the first half of the current season, which is the same number she managed in the entirety of 2022. Stephens is a momentum player and hasn&#8217;t played any matches since <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wimbledon\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Wimbledon<\/a>, so I&#8217;m backing her with a pint of caution.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Stephens in 3<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[cta id=4013 type=cta]<\/p>\n<h4>Belinda Bencic vs Anastasia Potapova<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Head-to-head:<\/strong> Bencic 1-1 Potapova<\/p>\n<p>Belinda Bencic has won 23 of her 32 matches this season, which is a fine record and is very much on course to have a career-best win-loss ratio. But it hasn&#8217;t all been plain sailing for the Swiss gold medalist whose brilliant first half of the year was curtailed by a hip injury. Bencic missed important tournaments in the leadup to the French Open and Wimbledon but appears to have shaken off every ounce of doubt regarding her fitness.<\/p>\n<p>Bencic came within a point of a maiden Wimbledon quarterfinal, and those missed match points against Swiatek will sting for a while. But one of her major attributes is that she takes defeats and setbacks in her stride. This won&#8217;t be an easy task for Bencic though. Potapova comes in with a strong reputation as the WTA&#8217;s ultimate marathoner, playing the most three-set matches this season. This will likely live the full three sets.<br \/>\n<em>Prediction: Bencic in 3<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Six first-round matches will be on the slate on Day 1 of the WTA Mubadala Citi Open in Washington. And frankly, we&#8217;ve got six matches of top-notch quality. Aside from the Wimbledon rematch between Victoria Azarenka and Elina Svitolina, we&#8217;ve got a two-time WTA champion in 2023, Belinda Bencic, facing one of the fastest-rising players [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":55988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[69],"tags":[1526,15429,266,15465,3553,15868,490,15929,2372,15534,463,3168,2373,2369,17989],"class_list":["post-58355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predictions","tag-anastasia-potapova","tag-anastasia-potapova-predictions","tag-belinda-bencic","tag-belinda-bencic-predictions","tag-bianca-andreescu","tag-bianca-andreescu-predictions","tag-lauren-davis","tag-lauren-davis-predictions","tag-marta-kostyuk","tag-marta-kostyuk-predictions","tag-sloane-stephens","tag-sloane-stephens-predictions","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions","tag-wta-washington-predictions"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58355","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=58355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}