The first Grand Slam singles title of 2025 will be won on Saturday when the Australian Open final takes place on the Rod Laver Arena as the defending champion Aryna Sabalenka goes up against Madison Keys for the title.
Sabalenka is actually looking for her third straight Australian Open crown here and goes into the final as the favourite to hoist the trophy aloft but Keys is a dangerous campaigner who could easily make this a cracking conclusion to the women’s event.
Aryna Sabalenka
The world number one Aryna Sabalenka is on a 20-match winning streak here in Melbourne and if she makes it 21 then she will win this title for the third successive time and pick up a fourth Grand Slam title in all after she added the US Open to her collection last year. The Belarusian is very much the best player in the world right now, especially on a hard court, and if she wins here she would have won the last three Grand Slams on this surface.
Sabalenka looks to have cruised through the draw so far but she has been challenged in a couple of her matches so that will serve her well in this final. The way she dispatched a clean hitting operator in Paula Badosa in the previous round will bode well too. Sabalenka also knows that she has what it takes to win a Grand Slam final and very often that can be the difference in these things. She won a close final in 2023 and a much more comfortable one in 2024 so she looks to have all bases covered.
Madison Keys
Madison Keys arrived in Melbourne with her spirits high after she won the pre-tournament event in Adelaide. There she had the likes of Jelena Ostapenko, Beatriz Haddad Maia, Daria Kasatkina and Jessica Pegula among her victims so she would have been feeling very good about herself heading into the opening Grand Slam of the year and nothing we have seen suggests that she isn’t still sky high when it comes to confidence because she has battled hard to make it through to this final.
She took care of Iga Swiatek in the semi-final, coming from a set down to win an epic match tiebreak and if that hasn’t heightened her confidence, nothing will have done. Keys has also seen off Danielle Collins, Elena Rybakina and Elina Svitolina in the second week of the tournament so nobody can claim she doesn’t deserve to be in this final. She does have pressure on her having never won a Grand Slam but you sense she has never been playing this week going into a final before.
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Head-to-head
These two have met five previous times in their career and Aryna Sabalenka has a 4-1 lead in those meetings. She has won all three hard court meetings including their only previous Grand Slam match on a hard court when the Belarusian came out on top in a match tiebreak in the semi-final of the US Open in 2023, a couple of months after she won their other Grand Slam meeting at Wimbledon. This will be the first time the two have met in a final of any kind and the first time they will have faced off in Australia.
Betting
Those who have followed us in from the beginning of this tournament will be sitting with a bet slip for Madison Keys at 50/1 having backed her before a ball was hit in Melbourne. The fact that she has already secured the 25/1 place money means that we can let that part of the outright bet ride and hope that she trebles our earnings. Keys is an 11/4 shot here but the form she is in makes me think this will be closer than that but I’m more than happy with where I am in the outright play to not get involved in the match outcome here.
The bet I like in this final is over 5.5 double faults. Madison Keys has had an issue with them anyway. Since the third round when she started playing dangerous challengers she has double fault totals of four, six, four and four so there is every chance against a Sabalenka who will really attack the second serve, potentially forcing Keys to go for that bit more on it, that Keys covers a significant amount of this total. Sabalenka might be in the same boat because Keys will go after her second serve and while the Belarusian second delivery is much improved, it can still come apart under pressure. This line has been covered in their last two meetings and I expect the hat trick to be completed here.
Tips
Back Over 5.5 double faults for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
