Simon Dalton presents his prediction for the WTA Cincinnati match.
Both reached the third round without dropping a set, and this match-up is more about sharp swings on serve than two evenly contested long sets: one early break can quickly dictate the whole set.
At 36, Cirstea is enjoying one of the strongest seasons of her career and is currently in the top 20. In Cincinnati, she was seeded 15th and began the tournament with a 7:6, 6:3 win over Nikola Bartunkova. Even with a tie-break, the match lasted only 22 games: the Romanian won nine of her ten service games and 75% of points behind her first serve.
More important for the total is that Cirstea has not been involved in prolonged swings on North American hard courts so far. Before Cincinnati, she lost 4:6, 4:6 to Maya Joint in Toronto — another 20-game match. That means the Romanian's last two matches on this surface have ended in straight sets and both stayed below the 22.5 line.
Kalinskaya is 21st in the rankings and also made a quick start to the tournament. She beat Caty McNally 6:3, 6:4, with the pair making eight breaks between them. That is an important detail: with that many lapses on serve, the score can easily run to 6:3 or 6:2, without the overall total rising. Anna had previously lost 3:6, 3:6 to Diana Shnaider in Toronto, winning just 29.6% of points on her second serve and dropping five service games.
Even a 7:6, 6:4 scoreline is precarious for Over 22.5, so the under needs only one shorter set. Both have aggressive returns and a habit of punishing an opponent's weak second serve — that is what increases the chance of a run of breaks rather than two long, closely contested sets.
We do not consider their head-to-head record the main argument, but it does not contradict the logic: in two of Cirstea and Kalinskaya's three matches, they stayed within 22 games. Both have just won in straight sets in Cincinnati, while their most recent hard-court matches have more often been decided by a clear margin. For this pairing, the 22.5 line looks too high.
