We’ve got a huge Round of 16 match-up when former Finalist Elena Rybakina faces American Madison Keys. See our outright Australian Open betting previews here.
Best Bet
Has never really produced great results at the Australian Open, but the Russian is under the radar flying.
Three straight set wins, all against top-65 ranked players including Putintseva who has been really strong the last eight months. Surprisingly, Kasatkina has the second best numbers of all players in the tournament with a serve and return point percentage of 121.3 slightly behind Iga Swiatek.
Navarro in comparison is going at 102.4 and has really struggled this Australian Open winning all three matches from unfavourable positions. The American relies on the heavy hitting of her opponent, but she won’t get anything like that from Kasatkina. If the Russian plays close to the level she’s produced so far, she’ll win this easily.
Next Best
Surprised to see 19-year-old Learner Tien underdog in this, considering he’s taken the scalps of Medvedev and most recently Moutet. Perhaps the view is he will run out of puff, but I think this match-up against Lorenzo Sonego is favourable.
The Italian has done well to advance, but he wasn’t that great statistically in his first-round match-up with Wawrinka, he played very well against Fonseca who came off the high of beating Rublev in his first Grand Slam match, and then was too good for Fabian Marozsan.
Tien has returned really well which should minimise the impact of the Sonego serve which has been his strength so far this tournament, with the Italian’s return game well below the tournament average. The American has a chance to make inroads into Sonego’s game and cover this line.
Value Bet
Rybakina has certainly played the better tennis of the two this tournament, but her opposition has been inferior – the Kazakh’s first two wins were against players ranked outside the top 190 in the world, while Yastremska isn’t really a top-40 player based on form from March last year.
Keys is in red-hot form winning Adelaide in the lead-up plus her win over Collins in the third round, but she will need to improve on her return game against Rybakina’s big serve.
Both players are heavy hitters with their head to head all square – two of those four matches going to three sets. I think the American can really push Rybakina, but her issue has been being able to produce big wins like these at majors – think this goes the distance.
Daily H2H Multi
Shelton (M) / De Minaur (M) / Swiatek (W) / Kasatkina (W) = $4.00
