The first week of the Australian Open concludes in Melbourne on Saturday and in doing so the men’s and women’s events will play down to the last 16 stage of the tournament.
16 singles matches will take place on the showcourts of Melbourne Park in all on Saturday and at the end of the day we will know the identity of those playing for glory in the second week of the tournament.
Friday was a fairly routine day in Melbourne although it wasn’t without the odd big name falling along the way. The biggest one to go out was the former US Open champion Marin Cilic while the Australian hope Nick Kyrgios also fell. Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams all made it safely through.
The bottom half of both draws will be at the centre of attention on Saturday which means we will see the likes of Andy Murray, Victoria Azarenka, Stan Wawrinka and Ana Ivanovic back in action looking for their third wins of the tournament.
Friday was a wretched betting day for me. A couple of important moments didn’t go my way and then to cap it all off I managed to lose 11-9 in a final set in one of the women’s matches so I’m hoping the luck is on my side on Saturday where I’m taking three bets.
The first of them comes in the women’s draw where I’m going to continue to side with the British number one Jo Konta. She takes on an opponent who beat her in the French Open first round last year in Denisa Allertova.
Allertova won that match in three sets but Konta is much a better player now than she was then and she is probably much more suited to hard courts than a clay court as well so I’m expecting that result to be reversed.
Allertova has gone three sets in both her matches so far and while her win over Lisicki in the previous round was a good one she has to repeat that. If anything Jo Konta was even more emphatic in the second round than she was against Venus in the first round and the way the Brit is playing I expect her to come through in two fairly comfortable sets.
After that match on Hisense comes a potentially lengthy match between Feliciano Lopez and John Isner. I expect this match to be very tight throughout. They have met on six previous occasions with each winning three times.
In those six meetings there have been a total of 10 tie-breaks in 19 sets including in all three sets of their last meeting at Queens in 2015. With both having limited ground games but heavy serves I’m not expecting to see too many breaks of serve in this match.
These two have met in this tournament in 2012 and at Wimbledon in 2014. Both matches went the distance. I’m not sure if this will or not but we should see four sets and if we do it is unlikely we will see less than 44.5 games.
The men’s match in the Margaret Court Arena night session sees Andy Murray taking on Joao Sousa. This will be the seventh time these two have met in the past and Murray is yet to be beaten by his Portuguese foe.
The only time Sousa has taken a set off the Scot was in the French Open last year. In the five matches they have played on hard courts Murray has won them all without losing a set and only one of the 12 sets has he conceded more than four games so another one sided contest is on the cards here.
Murray won by 12 games when these two met in this tournament last year and the emphatic nature he dismissed the big serving Sam Groth in the last round would suggest that something similar could well play out here. I don’t see Sousa having the weapons to stay with Murray over this occasion so I’m on the Scot here.
Back J.Konta (-3 games) to beat D.Allertova for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Sportingbet
Back F.Lopez vs J.Isner – Over 44.5 games for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
Back A.Murray (-9.5 games) to beat J.Sousa for a 4/10 stake at 1.95 with BetVictor
