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French Open wildcard entry, Russian born Australian Arina Rodionova will face a monster challenge in the first round against Croatia’s Ana Konjuh. Join The Roar for live scores from around 1:30am (AEST).
Rodionova received a wildcard to the event and will need an upset and a form reversal to get out of the first round. While she has had a long clay court season build up, it has been a mostly unsuccessful one.
The Australian played a pair of tournaments in Canberra to kick things off in March, recording a couple of unconvincing victories before losing in the first round of tournaments in Rabat, Tunis and Saint-Gaudens. Each of those were in straight sets and her confidence will be well down coming into the second grand slam of the year.
Rodionova might be best known to Australian fans for her participation in Australia’s Fed Cup triumph over Slovakia in February, where she lost the first rubber.
Her recent form matches up with career statistics in that she performs poorly on clay. She has a winning percentage of under 50 per cent on the red surface and hasn’t held more wins than losses in a calendar year since 2012.
After such a strong hard court season, it has been a massive let down for Arina.
Ana Konjuh on the other hand, at just 18 years old has elevated herself to 84th in the world rankings and favours the clay court with an almost 70 per cent winning rate. The Croatian hasn’t been in the best of form though and will be looking for a confidence lifting win here.
In fact, since the clay court season started she has only won five of ten matches and it is by far her worst record in a season to date. Losses to the likes of Heather Watson in Rome and Aliaksandra Sasnovich in Madrid were frustrating at best for the youngster.
She made her French Open debut last year, making the second round while she made the third round of Wimbledon in 2014 with her best ever grand slam performance. Rodionova on the other hand made the quarter-finals of this year’s Australian Open and hasn’t gone past the third round at Roland Garros in two attempts.
The pair have never faced off before.
Prediction
While her form has been below average, Konjuh should get the job done convincingly.
Konjuh in straight sets.
Be sure to join The Roar for live scores of this match from 1:30am (AEST) or following the Bethanie Mattek-Sands vs Irina-Camelia Begu match on Court 5 and don’t forget to leave your comments below.
Follow Scott on Twitter @sk_pryde