French Open - Gavrilova v Mertens

Daria Gavrilova and Elise Mertens have met four times before, with Mertens coming out on top in three of them. Both are still reasonably inexperienced on tour, but it is certainly Mertens who looks to have the potential to really take down the top prizes of the pair.

Mertens has already contested five main tour finals, winning four of those. Three of those finals came on clay, where she has won in Rabat and Lugano this season, and been runner-up in Istanbul. Gavrilova has made four main tour finals, but none so far this season, and never won a clay tournament throughout her career (at any level).

In terms of surface preference on the main tour, Mertens is clearly a clay afficianado - playing 35% of her tour matches on the surface, and winning 77% of them. Gavrilova has played a more modest 25% of her matches on clay, winning just 62%.

The improvement in Mertens over the past couple of seasons has been amazing, and she's won 60.3% of service points and 49.6% of receiving points against Top 100 players on clay during that time. Whether she maintains those standards, particularly on the receive metric remains to be seen, but it's certainly impressive.

Gavrilova is a more modest 52.6% on service (worryingly low for a top 25 player) and 43.3% on return.

On that evidence there could be a gulf between these players, and with 15 wins from 16 outings on clay this season, and 10 of those coming in straight sets, we're going to back Mertens to win again.

1pt Mertens to beat Gavrilova 2-0 at Evens (General)

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