Tennis Betting Tips: Pegula can push Swiatek all the way in Bad Homburg Open Final

Wimbledon is just around the corner, but before we turn our attention to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, there are a couple of WTA Tour finals to take your fancy over the weekend.

One of them takes place in Eastbourne, England, and another in Bad Homburg, Germany. Below are my Tennis Betting Tips for Saturday, June 28, as I pick a winner in both finals.

Match Betting - Alexandra Eala (PHL) to beat Maya Joint (AUS) @ 1/1

Saturday's Eastbourne Open Final will be the youngest title match in terms of combined age at the Devonshire Park Lawn Tennis Club since 1981, after 19-year-old Australian Maya Joint and 18-year-old Filipina Alexandra Eala made their way past Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (Wrl) and Varvara Gracheva (FRA), respectively, in the semi-finals on Friday.

World No. 51 Joint made it back-to-back straight sets wins against Pavlyuchenkova, having swatted aside Anna Blinkova (Wrl) in the quarter-finals, and her only dropped set of the tournament so far came against Emma Raducanu (GBR) in the second round.

World No. 74, Eala, meanwhile, was taken to three sets by Gracheva, but in her two previous completed matches, she didn't lose a set to Dayan Yastremska (UKR) or Lucia Bronzetti (ITA).

The two teenagers have never met before, and with their limited experiences on tour, this is a difficult final to predict.

Still, I'm siding with Eala, who became the first player in history from the Philippines to reach a WTA final. Unlike Joint, Eala had to come through two qualification rounds at the Eastbourne Open, beating Zeynep Sonmez (TUR) in straight sets and Hailey Baptiste (USA) in three.

She also gave World No. 27 Magda Linette a solid match at the Nottingham Open last week, losing 4-6, 3-6, and has won 10 of her 13 contests on grass court this month.

Joint, on the other hand, lost to World No. 108 Aliaksandra Sasnovich (Wrl) in the qualification rounds at the Nottingham Open, and has played eight fewer times on grass than Eala this year.

It could be close on Saturday, but I think Eala is more 'in the swing of things' on grass and will be out to make history for her nation.

Set Betting - Iga Swiatek (POL) 2-1 vs Jessica Pegula (USA) @ 3/1

World No. 8 Iga Swiatek will face off against World No. 3 Jessica Pegula at the Bad Homburg Open Final in Germany on Saturday.

Swiatek eased into the final day with a hat-trick of straight-sets wins over Victoria Azarenka (Wrl), Ekaterina Alexandrova (Wrl) and Jasmine Paolini (ITA), with the Pole losing only four games to the latter in Friday's semi-final.

Events haven't been as straightforward for Pegula, who comfortably beat Katerina Siniakova in her first match, but was taken to three sets by fellow American Emma Navarro and Linda Noskova (CZE). Against Noskova in their final-four tie on Friday, Pegula trailed 4-5 in the second set and was just two points away from defeat.

We'll have to wait and see how much that performance has taken out of her ahead of a showdown with Swiatek, who will contest her first final in more than a year.

Swiatek leads the head-to-head record 6-4, but has lost two of the last three, including the most recent meeting at the US Open quarter-finals last September. Pegula won that final-eight fixture in straight sets, and while her opponent is the heavy favourite to win the title on Saturday, she can take heart from her previous performances against the 24-year-old.

These two players have never met on grass before, so that's something to take into consideration, too, as is the fact that this is Swiatek's first WTA Tour final on this surface.

Pegula is the top seed and won her first grass-court title last year at the Berlin Tennis Open, so we could see a tighter contest than the odds suggest.

I'm still backing Swiatek to come out on top, but over three sets, rather than two.

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