We move into the second week of the Australian Open on Sunday where there will be little love lost on court on St Valentine’s Day as the opening Grand Slam of the campaign really sparks into life with the intensity beginning to rise.
Places in the quarter finals of the competition are up for grabs over the course of the day and into the evening on what promises to be a very high quality day of tennis on the two main arenas at Melbourne Park.
Day 6 Recap
Day 6 promised a lot but in terms of competitive action delivered relatively little. The only top seed who dropped a set in the men’s draw was Daniil Medvedev who had a few of his customary meltdowns before seeing off Filip Krajinovic in a deciding set. Elsewhere there were facile straight sets wins for Rafael Nadal, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Andrey Rublev. That wasn’t the case in the women’s draw though where Karolina Pliskova was a high profile casualty. Ash Barty and Elina Svitolina cruised through though.
It wasn’t a good day for us betting wise. We only went with the one bet which was for Rabu Albot to remain within 5.5 games of Casper Ruud and despite winning a set the damage was done in the opening one when Albot took too long to get going and ended up losing the first set 6-1 which pretty much ended his hopes of staying within the handicap without winning. He didn’t win and so sadly neither did we.
Rod Laver Arena
The pick of the matches is up first on the Rod Laver Arena on Sunday as the US Open champion Naomi Osaka goes up against the beaten finalist from this tournament last year in Garbine Muguruza before the other potentially high quality contest takes place as Aryna Sabalenka meets Serena Williams in a match which is not going to lack in power hitting. The day session concludes with potentially the favourite to reach the final from this half of the draw in Dominic Thiem meeting the former semi-finalist Grigor Dimitrov.
Two of the four current Grand Slam holders meet to open up the night session when the French Open winner Iga Swiatek meets the Wimbledon champion Simona Halep before all eyes will be on Novak Djokovic firstly to see if he appears to conclude the night session and if he does what shape he is in for a battle with Milos Raonic in which the Canadian will be looking to cause more pain for the world number one.
Margaret Court Arena
We are at that stage in the tournament where the singles action is confined to the two main courts and on the second of them it is Marketa Vondrousova who gets the action underway when she meets Su-Wei Hsieh before Felix Auger-Aliassime is the latest to step up to the mark to attempt to see off the Russian qualifier Aslan Karatsev who was firing in winners like they were going out of fashion in the previous round.
That leaves one singles match for the night session and it sees the US Open finalist Alexander Zverev looking to move a step closer to a first Grand Slam title when he takes on the Serbian ace Dusan Lajovic who has never been beyond this stage of a major competition so has the chance to make the quarter final of a Grand Slam for the first time in his career, which could make for a more competitive match than it might otherwise have done.
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Men’s Betting
I’ll go with the one bet in the men’s draw on Sunday and it comes in one of the two night session matches but not the one on Rod Laver where it has to be a genuine 5/6 each of two that Djokovic turns up to play. If he does he must be fit enough to compete and the 4/9 on him beating Raonic would look big. If he doesn’t bets are void anyway and if he pulls out early doors that is also a void so there isn’t a lot of point in getting involved in him.
Instead I’ll focus on the other match where I believe the match between Dusan Lajovic and Alexander Zverev will be a little closer than the games line suggests. As much as the German is improving in majors, he still hasn’t got to the stage where I trust him to win matches in straight sets as we go along. The game line for this match is 30.5 so Zverev could actually win in straight sets and the games line still get covered as what happened to him in the previous round. These two have met on the clay twice and they’ve gone five sets and while you have to accept this is on a hard court and will favour Zverev more, I’m not convinced this will be as one-sided as expected. I like the over here.
Women’s Betting
I’ll go with the one in the women’s draw as well on a day where I’m not convinced you’ll come out losing if you play the four outsiders blind. I certainly think Garbine Muguruza has a shot at taking out Naomi Osaka but I’ve learned quickly that the Japanese ace is not one to be opposed. We can enjoy what looks like a cracking contest there. Iga Swiatek is playing the tennis of her life and took Simona Halep to the cleaners en route to her French Open crown but it is one of the other outsiders I’m prepared to back.
That is Serena Williams who meets Aryna Sabalenka for the first time in their careers and while Sabalenka has played very nicely to this point she is an unforced errors machine and always on the edge of blowing her gasket and falling behind to a Serena who could quickly ramp up the pressure on her seems like the sort of occasion where she will be in difficulty. At this stage of her career Serena is going to get better the longer a tournament goes on and I suspect we’ll see the best of her here. If we do I don’t believe the tennis legend is an 11/10 shot in this match against an opponent who has never been beyond this stage of a major.
Tips
WON – Back D.Lajovic vs A.Zverev – Over 30.5 games for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
WON – Back S.Williams to beat A.Sabalenka for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betfair
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