TipResumen

PREVIEW

Twelve months ago Sloane Stephens made a couple of surprising runs in the Canadian and Cincinnati Premier Events after recently returning from a long lay off. Even then not many would have picked the American to go on and win the US Open. Stephens has had some ups and downs since winning her maiden Grand Slam, but she has become a player who builds momentum within tournaments that can be very hard to stop. She won a big title in Miami earlier in 2018, the second biggest title of her career, and Stephens has since reached the French Open Final as well as the Canadian Premier Event Final last week. Backing up big weeks can be difficult, but I think Stephens has been given a good chance to make a start when taking on Tatjana Maria in the Second Round. The American has had a few days off from the Sunday Final loss to Simona Halep in Montreal so I am not too worried about fatigue, while Stephens showed she can have two big weeks in a row by winning a Grand Slam title and also playing so well in Canada and Cincinnati in 2017. Tatjana Maria has come through the Qualifiers and won a First Round match in the main draw which deserves a lot of respect. However that means she has played plenty of tennis in recent days and Maria has not produced strong numbers on the hard courts in 2018. Those numbers take another decline when you only consider the main draw WTA tournaments she has played on the hard courts and Maria will have to hope Stephens is off her game here. Maria is 1-11 on the hard courts in main draw matches at the WTA level and she would have failed to get within this number in nine of those defeats. There is no doubt that Stephens can sometimes be hard to trust, especially when it comes to covering these big numbers. However she would have done that in all four wins in Montreal last week and I will back the American to get off to a very strong start in Cincinnati.



PREDICTION

This is a big number for Sloane Stephens to cover, but I think she is playing well enough to do that.