Simona Halep vs Andrea Petkovic prediction

Simona Halep, currently 4^th on the WTA ranking list, is playing against Andrea Petkovic, currently 27^th in the rankings.

This is the first Grand Slam semifinal for both tennis players. Simona Halep is emerging as one of the top tennis players this season, after she moved up by more than a fifty places in the rankings in the past year. On the other hand, Andrea Petkovic finally broke into the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament, after battling against her rough injury in 2012.

Petkovic reached three quarterfinals in 2011. She was emerging as a top 10 player, with an ambition to be a slam contender, but then she injured her knee, and the dream became a nightmare for the German tennis player. She missed three consecutive Grand Slam tournaments in 2012, and lost in the first round of US Open. She was out of the top 100, and after another bad year, it was thought that she would never compete on a top 10 level again.

This is the chance of her career to break into a slam final, and who knows? Maybe even win a title.

But, the same goes for Halep too. She played quarterfinals in Australian Open, in this year’s French Open Halep didn’t lose a single set, but she played against lower ranked players. The only top 20 tennis player she played was Sloan Stephens, but we must say that she easily beat Svetlana Kuznetsova, the multiple slam winner in the quarterfinals.

This match should be very interesting. Petkovic won against Sara Errani in the quarters in two easy sets, and the Italian is very similar to Halep. She is very strong defensively, very well physically prepared, but Halep is, at the moment, probably the best defensive player on the WTA tour. And, which can be very important, she has a much better serve than Errani. Petkovic earned that victory against the Italian, mostly attacking her weak serve, but it will be much harder against Halep.

Halep will certainly try to dictate the match from the baseline, and force Petkovic to make errors.

Head to head

Halep leads 2:1, in matches on clay the result is 1:1, but Petkovic earned that victory five years ago, when Halep was still a teenager.

Prediction

Considering all of this, it is expected that Halep will win this match with straight sets.