Analysis for Molik-Mirza (Hopman Cup)

Head-to-head record 0:1

Our first pick for the new season comes from Hopman Cup. Sania Mirza of India will face Australian Alicia Molik in their second Hompan Cup performance. Molik is our favourite player and even when she has been firstly considered to be a double specialist for a long time, we saw the big potential in her skills. She improved her singles results as well and reached the top ten on the WTA tour for the first time in 2005 following her first grandslam quarters at the Aussie Open. Later in that year, she suffered an ear infection which forced her miss much of the later season. Lately, she announced that she will take an extended break including whole 2006 season for full recovery. Although she has managed to return to the main tour earlier than expected, she wasn´t able to bounce back and has never got back to the previous level of performances. Even when she has been struggling since that time, she showed some signs of improvement in the last months of 2007. She is a heavy-hitting player who prefers rapid surfaces and Hopman Cup has always been very prestigious for her. Her first performance against Safarova wasn’t far from being perfect and we believe she will be able to continue that way against Mirza. She is the best Indian female player ever born, but we still see inconsistencies in her game. She is a player of solid tennis skills and should have a big potential but we don’t think she is a better player than Molik. She also prefers faster surfaces but is less experienced and shouldn’t be able to overplay the home star on Aussie soil. Molik´s odds aren’t brilliant but she is still a bit overvalued here and anything above 1.65 is worth taking for us.