WTA Birmingham

This is some field in Birmingham for the first WTA grass court event of the season. Not in that it is star studded but in that it was quite a challenge to tissue price and there were inevitably going to be discrepancies involved across all of the books. That proved to be the case and there has been plenty of odds slashing since the prices came out on Sunday afternoon.

It's not often that a favorite for a WTA event is priced as high as 8/1 (which you can find to back Sabine Lisicki) but that's what we have in Birmingham which further illustrates how open this event could prove to be. The opportunity for some big prices to have deep runs in Birmingham is vast and with plenty of rain expected over the week the schedule could be thrown into some chaos.

The Overrule likes Tsvetana Pironkova 50/1 and Kristina Mladenovic 20/1 who are in opposite halves of the draw. Pironkova masquerades as a tennis player for most of the year and it's during the grass court season where she really exhibits her qualities. Her record this year is not worth touching on, that was non-grass, and she's massively overpriced at 50/1.

Mladenovic doesn't have much main tour level grass court experience to speak of but she has a game that could and should be productive on it. Her serve is very smooth and damaging when on and at only 20 years of age she will develop consistency in time - she will hope.

The Overrule will back both players with half a point each-way and if one or both can reach the last four we will be well set to reassess our positions.

0.5* Tsvetana Pironkova win Birmingham (each-way) at 50/1 (Coral) (each-way terms 1/2 odds 1-2 places)

0.5* Kristina Mladenovic win Birmingham (each-way) at 20/1 (Paddy Power) (each-way terms 1/2 odds 1-2 places)