Elina Svitolina – Ekaterina Alexandrova. Forecast and match announcement

On Friday, October 2, Ukraine’s top racket Elina Svitolina (No. 5 WTA) will play a third-round match at the French Open tennis championship. In the 1/16 final match, the Ukrainian will fight Russia’s first racket Ekaterina Aleksandrova (No. 31 WTA). The match will take place with the first outing on the court of Suzanne Lenglen and will begin at 12:00 Kiev time.

Winning this match should bring one of the players € 63,000 in prize money and 110 points to the WTA ranking, in addition to the € 126,000 already won. Last year, both players finished the fight in the third round, so only the winner will count the points. The loser cannot improve his position in any way.

Rival

Aleksandrova is only two months younger than Svitolina and has been slowly progressing up the world rankings in recent years. In 2016, she was still out of the top hundred, three years later, she finished in the top 40. At the moment, her best result is on February 25 of this season.

Photography Jimmie48. Ekaterina Alexandrova

By the way, the season started very well. At the end of the last calendar year, for the third time in four years, Ekaterina won the 125 thousand in Limoges, later the first full-fledged WTA title was taken in Shenzhen. As for performances at Grand Slam tournaments, the Russian woman has not yet passed the third round. This year in Australia she lost without a chance to Petra Kvitova, another exam against the best tennis player is the following. Previously, Aleksandrova beat the girls in the top ten twice, but both victories were with weakened opponents: against Alena Ostapenko, who started a steep fall in 2018, and against Simona Halep with a back injury in September 2019.

Tournament route

Tournament statistics

	Svitolina	Александрова
matches	two	two
average rating of opponents	133.5	129
average game time	1:36	1:12
seconds spent at a point	40	38
points earned with service,%	52.4	64.9
ace / game	0.07	0.03
double faults / game	0.07	0.22
% of the first feeding	61.9	59.7
points earned with the first serve,%	60.4	69.1
points won with second serve,%	39.3	58.7
points earned at the reception,%	52.1	51.4
implemented breakpoints,%	61.9	75.0
Grid / game outputs	0.74	0.47
points played near the net,%	61.7	64.7
winners / game	0.61	1.33
unforced errors / game	1.39	1.08

Prospects in the ranking

After the departure of Karolina Plishkova, the Ukrainian woman had an excellent opportunity to climb a little higher. To get ahead of the Czech, she must reach the quarter-finals, there is also the possibility of becoming the third, bypassing Osaka. But this will require the end, we still will not fantasize in such distances.

Also, don’t forget that Sofia Kenin and Kiki Bertens are not hanging by the tail. So far, the prospects for both at Roland Garros are hard to believe, but there is definitely no need to fly because of this in the third round.

Aleksandrova’s fight for the top 30 is much more dense, at this stage it is too early to analyze something and it is not very interesting.

Forecast

Aleksandrova’s style is suitable for faster coatings. She has a good presentation and an emphasis on attack, on her own activity. Both forehand and backhand work very well, but on the ground it still doesn’t feel very comfortable. In Rome, Rybakina disarmed it, in Strasbourg, Sinyakova surpassed her. Once the season resumes, the Russians have just four wins on the ground: three over the second-tier Australians and one over Mladenovic in Palermo. By the way, Lesya Tsurenko knocked out Ekaterina in the second round. It’s not a very impressive resume before going to Svitolina.

But Elina continues to show an extremely mysterious game. It constantly lacks stability, but still victories are achieved. The only defeat came from the first primer Vondrousova, who, by the way, flew to Roland Garros in the first round.

For Svitolina in good shape, Aleksandrova on the Paris courts is a completely outmatched opponent, but to win she needs to play at a good level. As it was in the match with Kuznetsova, for example. Svetlana, even at 35 on clay, is a much more dangerous opponent than her compatriot, who is 10 years younger and fresher.

Prediction: Svitolina win in two sets