There were two tennis matches previewed in today's earlier than usual newslettter, both can be read below, Jelena Ostapenko (pictured) has just won 6-3,6-1.......

Roland Garros begins on Sunday week, most of you know that clubgowi tennis revolves around the four grand slam events, but we do dip into the occasional warm up event, especially pre Wimbledon and I think we will preview a number of matches at the Italian Open this week

WTA : Italian Open

Kristina Mladenovic- Jelena Ostapenko  EARLY START !

This tournament has more names than you can wave a tennis racquet at, but we will stick with the Italian Open for this week. We will ease back into tennis in the build up to Roland Garros and I have picked two matches today to get us started.

Kristina Mladenovic has struggled since the Australian Open and is 2-8 in subsequent WTA events, today she meets promising 18 yo Latvian, Jelena Ostapenko, who has made the final in Doha and semis in Katowice this year and in 2014 as a 16 yo, won multi low level clay court tournaments and took the Junior title at Wimbledon . The pair have actually met once before, on grass at the All England Club last summer, Mladenovic the senior player won in two close sets 6-4 7-5, but she was in better shape at the time and Ostapenko was still coming to terms with life at WTA level. The young Latvian sereved very poorly that day, only 44% of first serves and 10 double faults and to still get to within four games was noteworthy, she won a LOT of points on Mladenovic's second serve and today, the Frenchwoman is going to have to up her game in that regard and we have seen no recent evidence to suggest that is likely and I do not see how Ostapenko can serve as badly again and the (currently) higher ranked player needs a lot to go her way to win this, IMO.

Ostapenko has won her last four against taller players and is 2-1 in the last 12 months against players 1.83m +, the loss being that close game with Mladenovic at Wimbledon. Those stats are not really surpising as she is currently being helped by Vera Dushevina, who I believe is now officially her coach, Dushevina is still playing doubles occasionally and only 29 yo,  she has a very similar build to Mladenovic and hitting with her day by day, means that Ostapenko is always going to be comfortable against tall opponents.

1.25 units Jelena Ostapenko to beat Kristina Mladenovic 2.04 Pinnacle Sports/ Sportmarket Pro..............there is 2.0 pretty much across the board (all companies).

1.25 units Anna-Lena Friedsam +6 games 2.08 Pinnacle Sports/Sportmarket Pro.