Caroline Garcia vs Ana Ivanovic prediction

Ana Ivanovic, currently 12^th on the WTA ranking list is playing against Caroline Garcia, currently 43^rd in the rankings.

Ana Ivanovic is a one-time Roland Garros champion in 2008, and a former world number 1. Caroline Garcia is a young French tennis player who has been playing really well this spring.

Ivanovic and Garcia haven’t played before, this is their first match. Ana is certainly the favorite to win this, but Garcia is possibly the worst opponent she could have gotten of all the unseeded players in the first two rounds.

Unusually, Ana’s draw looks much better from 4^th round on. Apart from the very hard match with Garcia in the start, she could play with 23^rd seed Lucie Safarova in the 3^rd round, which has a great head to head record with the Serbian player. Safarova leads 4:2, and four of these matches were won in a row!

In the fourth round she could play with Kvitova, who is not that dangerous on clay, and Ana has a positive head-to-head with her – 4:3; and in the quarterfinals she is up against Simona Halep. Ivanovic has a 2-2 record with her, but she beat her once on clay this season, although Halep won the last match in Madrid. She can’t play the dominant first favorite Serena Williams until the final, so if Ana “survives” the early scare, she might as well reach the very end of the tournament.

Caroline Garcia is a tough opponent. She is only 21, but she already reached the second round in every Grand Slam tournament during the past two seasons. She was unlucky with the draw, considering she played Serena Williams twice in the last year, so if that wasn’t the case, she could have produced even better Slam results up to date.

Garcia has a great score on clay in this season; she won 11 out of 14 matches. She even managed to win a title in Bogota, after beating Ana Ivanovic’s compatriot and a top 10 player, Jelena Jankovic. That result will be the biggest warning sign to Ana that she mustn’t underestimate her opponent.

However, this match depends solely on Ivanovic. If she plays her best game, Garcia shouldn’t pose a threat to her. But, we must have in mind that Ivanovic sometimes plays in a nervous manner, and is unable find her rhythm, so then she becomes easily beatable. That didn’t happen that often in the last two years, especially against lower ranked opponents such as Caroline Garcia, so we can expect a competitive match, and Ivanovic’s victory in it.

Head to head

This will be the first match between these two opponents.

Prediction

It is expected that Ivanovic will win without much trouble.