Daily match picks

Sofia Kenin 1.48, Ons Jabeur 3.0

Kenin leads their previous matches 3-1. The last time they met was in June on grass. Jabeur retired. Kenin also won in Hobart last season. She won on a hard court in straight sets.

Stronger overall results for Kenin in the last 12 months. Her hard court results are also better.

Jabeur has won 3 of her matches as underdog in this tournament. She has played well but Johana Konta, Caroline Garcia,Caroline Wozniacki and Qiang Wang all had pretty poor matches.

Kenin had 2 good wins in the last 2 rounds. She beat Cori Gauff in 3 sets in the fourth round. Gauff had knocked out defending champion Naomi Osaka in her previous match.

I favour Kenin to win but expect to see a higher price on her. Back Kenin around 1.85 to 1.95.

   

Angelique Kerber 2.16, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 1.85

Due to start at 6 am.

Head to heads are 7-7. The last time they played was in September last year in Osaka, Japan. Pavlyuchenkova won their semi final match on a hard court in straight sets. Their last 7 matches were on hard courts. Pavlyuchenkova leads 4-3 in those 7 matches.

Pavlyuchenkova hasn’t lost a set so far. She beat Karolina Pliskova in 2 tie break sets in the last round. Pliskova did not serve as well as she can. In the second round Pavlyuchenkova faced American Taylor Townsend and that was also a close match. Pavlyuchenkova played well and was only broken twice.

Kerber was pretty comfortable in her first 2 matches and started very strongly against Camila Giorgi in the third round. Maybe she relaxed a little in the second set after easily winning set 1 and Giorgi nicked the set in a tie break.

Kerber has better stats for the tournament. Some value on her. Kerber has been more solid on serve than Pliskova was against Pavlyuchenkova. We have a very good chance of seeing 3 sets.

Lay Pavlyuchenkova around 1.65 and remove the liability at 2.30. Lay the set 1 winner. Long match expected.