Garbine Muguruza vs Daria Gavrilova Tennis Prediction

The pair were scheduled to meet for the first time earlier this year at Sydney, but the Spaniard withdrew with a thigh injury. Muguruza will head into the clash as the favorite, as Gavrilova seeks her first top 10 win since the title-winning run at 2017 New Haven (#10 Radwanska).

Garbine Muguruza News

Garbine Muguruza has registered consecutive semifinal appearances at Internazionali BNL d’Italia in the last two years. In 2017, she defeated Ostapenko, Goerges and V. Williams to earn the final four spot, but retired to eventual champion Svitolina (neck).
The former world #1 heads into this match with a 14-7 season record against outside top 20 players and a decent 8-4 main draw W/L at Rome. She has produced some strong serving performances in 2018, with 76.4% service games won (fifth-best in 2018).
The 2016 French Open champion, entering her third tournament on clay in 2018, has gone with a 2-2 record in them so far. After an opening-round exit at Stuttgart (ret. back injury), she made it to the third round of Madrid last week (l. to Kasatkina).

Daria Gavrilova News

Daria Gavrilova secured her first win of the season in Europe by defeating qualifier Natalia Vikhlyantseva in two hours and 35 minutes (5-7 6-4 6-3). In the 31-game match, there were 16 breaks of serve from both sides, Gavrilova claiming nine of those.
In 2015, a couple of months after her breakthrough round of 16 run at Miami (debuted into top 100, d. #2 Sharapova), Gavrilova broke into the top 50 with a semifinal run here at Rome as a qualifier (d. #7 Ivanovic, l. to Sharapova).
After 2015, the Australian has posted the third round in 2016 (d. Lisicki and #5 Halep, l. to Kuznetsova) and a quarterfinal in 2017 (d. #8 Kuznetsova and #24 Garcia) at this Premier 5 tournament.

Tennis Prediction: Garbine Muguruza 2-0 SET
Odds: 1.88