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Swiatek eases through as Gauff exits
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Wickmayer can pick up another grass victory
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Maria with surface pedigree against Cirstea
Linette gets day one off to a strong start
We started off our women's tournament with a winner on Monday with Magda Linette easing past the grass-hating Jill Teichmann, while another to ease into round two is title favourite Iga Swiatek, who got past Lin Zhu for the loss of four games.
Our back-to-lay pick Jessica Pegula also progressed, along with the likes of Caroline Garcia and Veronika Kudermetova, but we did see Pegula's fellow American Sofia Kenin get the better of Cori Gauff in three sets.
Unfortunately, as is often the case for the opening round of a Grand Slam, there's a lot of short-priced favourites on the Tuesday card, including Ons Jabeur, Bianca Andreescu, Karolina Pliskova, Petra Kvitova, Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys, Barbora Krejcikova, Aryna Sabalenka and last year's winner Elena Rybakina, so expect plenty of one-way traffic on the day ahead.
In fact, it's pretty difficult to have a confident opinion on much on the schedule, given the lack of court time for most players on grass, so there looks to be a tricky Tuesday in prospect. Looking for some value in lower-profile matches looks the way forward.
In-form Wickmayer a decent price against Blinkova
Yanina Wickmayer is having a renaissance of late, winning 10 of 11 on grass so far this season, winning a decent ITF title in Surbiton, and qualifying to be here. Her only loss was against the grass-court specialist Tatjana Maria, so Wickmayer clearly is enjoying her return to grass courts.
Opponent Anna Blinkova has had a mixed grass season so far, with a decent win over Leylah Fernandez in Bad Homburg but a loss against lucky loser Elina Avanesyan in Berlin, and to be honest, hasn't been able to pick up many wins on grass over recent years.
Blinkova's grass numbers in the last couple of seasons have been nothing special at all, with mediocre data particularly on serve, and I think that Wickmayer's serve will be too strong for her. Wickmayer looks a decent price at 1.855/6.
Grass specialist Maria a surprising underdog
Moving on, at first glance I thought Madison Brengle at 1.804/5 would be a spot against the veteran clay-courter Sara Errani, but then I took a look at the American's grass court data. Brengle is 2-9 in main tour matches on grass in the last three years, achieving worse serve stats than the notoriously poor serving Errani. It's tough to advocate a position on Brengle with that in mind.
The other interesting match is the aforementioned grass specialist Tatjana Maria, who reached the final in the Gaiba Challenger on the surface several weeks ago, and took a set from world number one Iga Swiatek in Bad Homburg a week ago.
Maria faces Sorana Cîrstea, who is now 1-5 in her last six matches, with four of the five losses coming as a pre-match favourite. Cirstea hasn't picked up many wins on grass in the last few years, and Maria has a data edge when looking at short-term, medium-term and long-term numbers on the surface.
Given this, Maria's price as an underdog is a little strange, and the 2.0811/10 about the German veteran looks some value.