World number 57 Polona Hercog will be up against Japanese player and 77th-ranked Misaki Doi in the first round of the 2021 WTA Dubai on Monday, March 8. The match is yet to be scheduled. Get the live streaming options of this Polona Hercog v Misaki Doi match along with its preview, head to head, and tips here.
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Polona Hercog v Misaki Doi Head to Head
This will be the sixth match between Hercog and Doi. Hercog holds a slight edge with a 3-2 on head to head over her Japanese opponent, but on indoor and outdoor hard courts it’s 2-0 in favour of Hercog, which includes a win at the Miami Open of 2019 the last time they had met each other.
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Hercog Struggling to Get Going
She has played in three tournaments this season and has won just one match, losing three other encounters. And with that kind of a start, Hercog knows she has to try and get some sort of a rhythm under her belt going into the rest of the season where the tournaments will start coming thick and fast.
While her defeats have come to Aryna Sabalenka, Caroline Garcia and Daria Kasatkina – three tough opponents at the moment in their own right – even in her only win against Margarita Gasparyan, at the Gippsland Trophy, Hercog needed to overcome a set deficit to register her sole victory.
Hercog is a clay-court specialist having got herself just one win on hard court surfaces in all of 2020, but with just a quarterfinal at the Istanbul Open on clay under her belt, it wasn’t like her form on red dirt was extraordinary either.
Can she now overcome an opponent she holds a good record against on hard court surfaces?
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‘Lucky’ Doi Won’t Be Rusty
While she is ranked 77th in the world, 20 places behind her opponent in this encounter, and hasn’t had the best of results, the one thing one can be sure of is Doi wouldn’t be too rusty coming into this encounter. That’s because spread across six tournaments and over qualifiers and main draw matches, Doi has already played 15 matches this season.
Rather interestingly, Doi can also consider herself to be ‘lucky’ she has played those matches. Over the last three tournaments – at the Adelaide International, WTA Doha and now here in Dubai – the Japanese player has been knocked out in the final round of the qualifiers only to make it to the main draw as a lucky loser! That’s right, three in a row.
And each of the past two times she has gotten to the main draw as a lucky loser, Doi has also managed to win her opening round match. She defeated Ana Blinkova at Adelaide and then defeated Saisai Zheng in the opener in Dubai.
Can she now make it three in three here?
Hercog v Doi Prediction and Tip
Doi starts off at 13/10 but having played a plethora of matches this season she would have some sort of a rhythm to her game as compared to her opponent Hercog. Backing Doi to win at least a set.
Tip: Doi to win a set – Yes: 4/7 (bet365)
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The 2021 WTA Dubai Open will be played from March 8 to 14. You can watch & bet on these matches here. Get your latest premium tennis predictions here.
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