Australian Open 2019 Preview – January 21st, 2019 at 1:30 am
More big fourth-round action comes our way on Sunday with America’s Madison Keys looking to overcome another top challenger. Having seen of Elise Mertens in the last round she goes up against the powerful Elina Svitolina for a place in the quarterfinals. Svitolina has been moving smoothly at the tournament and the winner of this will play either Anastasija Sevastova or Naomi Osaka in the quarters.
Madison Keys v Elina Svitolina odds*
Madison Keys 4/6
Elina Svitolina 6/5
* (betting odds taken from bet365 on January 19th, 2019 at 11:27 pm)
Keys easing through challenges
Madison Keys faced her trickiest challenge of the tournament so far in the third round when she took on 12th seed Elise Mertens. So after straight-set wins in the first two rounds where she was really untroubled, things were expected to be a little bit tighter for her against Mertens. It wasn’t as Keys again won in straight sets and never appeared to be in any trouble.
Twelve months ago Keys reached the quarter-final stage of the Australian Open, not quite being able to match her best ever run at the tournament, which was a semi-final berth in 2015. But after a strong showing in the 2018 Grand Slams, with two semi-finals and a quarter-final place, she is carrying a threat here. Now though, without question, will come her most serious threat so far at Melbourne Park.
Svitolina fired up for Melbourne
Elina Svitolina powered her way through her first two matches of the tournament without so much as breaking a sweat really. She looked really focused and fired up. They were easy matches, but they were good warm-ups and she needed to dig a little deeper when it came to her third round match against Shuai Zheng.
Svitolina dropped the first set so was under pressure and her opponent never let her get away. It went all the way to a 7-5 win in the final set for Svitolina, who is seeded sixth at this year’s tournament. Like Keys, Svitolina was a quarter finalist at Melbourne Park last season. She has yet to have made it to the semi-finals of any Grand Slam tournament
Head to head
The two have met twice before and Keys has won both meetings. Their first was back in 2015 when the American took a straight sets win at New Haven. The most recent meeting between the two was then in 2017 with Keys getting the deciding set on the board in a really good tussle. That was at the US Open.
Prediction
It is likely going to be very tight, all the way to the end in this one. There really isn’t much to choose between them at the moment. But Svitolina came into this tournament as a good threat to go all the way and reach the title, and we are going to stick with her to come through this trail as the 6/5 underdog* (betting odds taken from bet365 on January 19th, 2019 at 11:27 pm).
