June 29 - July 5th (Week One Of Wimbledon)

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That time of year again! Very exciting :) Hopefully we can pick some winners!

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Soler-Espinosa to beat Sesil Karatancheva at 6-4 with Boyles. This girl , Soler-Espinosa, has been flying under the radar for years really and I am still baffled as to why the bookies still never take her seriously. She is basically a solid journeywoman who generally tends to beat who she is supposed to beat and rarely ever makes it deep into big tournaments and rarely records shock victories versus big names which is possibly why she still flies under the radar a bit. But s...he actually has a very solid grand slam record and even though she is probably considered to be more of a clay court player , she has actually won each of her first round matches at the last 3 Wimbledons. She has played against players on a similar level to Karatancheva : Gallovits in 2012, Doi in 2013 and Govortsova in 2014. She also has some good from to draw from. She pushed Kvitova to three sets in the French open and reached the final of an ITF tournament in Montpellier last week before losing to veteran clay courter, Dominguez Lino. Another factor that is well worth considering is the head-to- head. Soler-Espinosa leads the head to head 3-1 and has basically hammered Karatancheva in straights the last three times that they have played. Yes, none of those meetings were on grass but it still seems to point to match -up problem for Karatancheva! As for Karatancheva, she is having a pretty good season to be fair. She beat Jankovic at the French but Jankovic played horribly and Karatancheva then went on to lose to Falconi in the next round which doesn't inspire confidence. She has the advantage of having played a match on grass already this year but she lost in straights to Dellaqua so that also doesn't inspire confidence. She also does not have a good record at Wimbledon. Due to her good form this year, this is the first season that she has not had to qualify for Wimbledon but before this year she has failed to qualify for Wimbledon for the last 4 years!! I just think Soler-Espinosa is consistently under-rated in these match ups. She is a very solid match player with a good temperament and a solid game. No major weapons but she doesn't make many mistakes and both the head to-head record and her record at Wimbledon is enough to convince me that, at the very least, she should be favourite! Which is why the 6-4 seems like great value smile emoticon Good luck folks and feel free to disagree!