Tennis Betting Tips: Back the Sakkari hat-trick on Friday

It's over to Iasi, Romania and Athens, Greece for Friday's Tennis Betting Tips as we look to pick out a couple of winners from the day's action.

My two selections include a player who has landed us a couple of winners already this week...

Set Betting - Maria Sakkari 2-0 vs Alycia Parks @ 5/6

Maria Sakkari has come up trumps for me twice this week, landing 4/5 and 4/6 winners on Monday and Wednesday, respectively, by beating Polina Kudermetova (6-0, 7-6) and Harriet Dart (6-1, 6-2) in straight sets.

The 30-year-old was pushed hard in the second set by her first-round opponent in Athens, Kudermetova, but across the other three sets she has played in her home tournament, she's only lost a combined three games.

Sakkari's quarter-final opponent, American Alycia Parks, has already beaten a Greek here, outclassing Valentini Grammatikopoulou 7-6, 6-4 in the first round before edging past Japanese counterpart Mai Hontama (6-7, 6-2, 7-5) on Wednesday. The 25-year-old's first two matches were against players ranked outside the top 200, though, and now she faces the Greek No. 1, who is 37th in the world, 33 places higher than herself.

Tennis Odds

Parks does have the upper hand in the head-to-head, though, winning their two previous meetings - both on hard courts - in Ostrava (5-7, 7-5, 7-5) and Miami (6-3, 6-3) in October 2022 and March 2026, respectively.

The American has won four of her last five matches on the surface, losing only to World No. 4 Coco Gauff (6-3, 0-6, 1-6) at the Miami Open during that run, which followed a four-match losing streak across Doha, Dubai, Austin and Indian Wells.

Sakkari is 10-6 on hard courts this year, though, while Parks is 9-8. The latter may have the head-to-head record in her favour, but she laboured against 202-ranked Hontama in midweek, while Sakkari has been close to flawless in the city she was born and raised.

With the backing of a home crowd, Sakkari should be able to ride that momentum all the way on Friday and exact revenge on Parks for their previous two meetings.

Set Betting - Petra Marcinko 2-0 vs Tamara Zidansek @ 1/1

Tamara Zidansek has pulled off two upsets already in Iasi, beating World No. 96 Emiliana Arango (5-7, 6-2, 6-3) and World No. 73 Anna Bondar (7-6, 6-7, 7-5) in the first and second round, respectively, to set up a third-round tie with World No. 45 Petra Marcinko, who beat the Slovenian 6-1, 6-2 in their only previous meeting in a Rome Challenger semi-final on the clay last July.

Marcinko, meanwhile, was taken to three sets in her first-round match in Iasi by Nadia Podoroska (6-2, 3-6, 6-4) before coming through a couple of tiebreakers against Elina Avanesyan (7-6, 7-6).

The 20-year-old Croatian No. 2 has been installed as the favourite in Friday's match with Zidansek, and I'm confident her superior talent will show in a straight-sets success over an opponent eight years her senior.

Zidansek could only claim three games when she faced Marcinko in July 2025, and three of her last four defeats on the clay have come in straight sets.

Marcinko, seeded second at the Iasi Open, has a 12-7 record on clay this calendar year, winning the Morocco Open in Rabat in May, losing just one set en route to glory, underlining her credentials as one of the most dangerous players at the lower-level clay events.