Australian Open Women's Day Seven Tips

 Australian Open Women's Day Seven Tips: Keys' price looks generous for Badosa clash

There are four women's singles fourth round matches on the schedule for Sunday, and with some fascinating matches in prospect, Dan Weston returns to preview the day ahead...

Tauson exits as Swiatek continues to impress

Our pick on Saturday, Clara Tauson, was pipped 7-5 in the final set by Danielle Collins to leave us winless, but also having had a pretty solid tournament so far. There were no major shocks on day six, with the likes of Simona Halep and our outright, Iga Swiatek, easing to victories. Swiatek is now into the 7.2 joint second favourite on the outright market, with Ash Barty still leading the way at 2.88.

Barty a bigger price for Anisimova challenge

Barty faces Amanda Anisimova instead of Naomi Osaka, following the American's dramatic tiebreak victory on Friday, and is a strong favourite to make the quarter-finals at 1.26. Barty has dropped just eight games in six sets en route to this stage, but now faces a step up in quality with Anisimova being unbeaten in all her eight matches this season so far.

Market prices illustrates as such. So far, Barty has started below 1.10 in all three of her previous matches in the tournament, but is bigger against Anisimova, so it's pretty evident that despite being falsely ranked outside the top 60, Anisimova has the market's respect. However, it's difficult to dispute the market lines to any large extent, with Barty having a notably higher service points won percentage on hard court in the last 12 months, in conjunction with better return numbers as well.

Keys very capable of defeating Badosa

The other three matches all feature slight underdogs, all of which look to be priced slightly bigger than my numbers would indicate. Madison Keys is a 2.68 underdog for her meeting with Paula Badosa, and Keys has impressed this year and is on an eight match unbeaten run herself currently. However, Badosa also is after the duo both won warm-up events prior to the Australian Open.

On hard court over the last 12 months, the big-serving Keys unsurprisingly has an edge on service points won percentages, but Badosa has a slightly bigger advantage on return. This year, Keys actually has slightly better combined numbers so far. Considering this, Keys' market price looks generous, particularly given her greater experience in the latter stages of Grand Slam events.

Krejcikova another underdog with chances

Barbora Krejcikova is impressing away from her preferred clay but is another fairly surprisingly-priced underdog at 2.74 for her meeting with Victoria Azarenka. On hard courts in the last 12 months, their data looks pretty evenly matched - Azarenka has a marginal edge in percentage of points won, and sets won, but it's certainly nothing which would indicate such a deviation away from even money for the match.

Azarenka, though, has impressed in the tournament so far, dropping just nine games in six sets and has better numbers this year overall, so you can kind of see where the market is going with their pricing. However, if there's any value here, it's on Krejcikova, in my opinion.

Pegula completes day for potential underdogs

Jessica Pegula also has chances at 3.10 for her clash with Maria Sakkari. Pegula's performances on hard court over the last 12-18 months have been pretty impressive overall, and she actually has better hard court data over the last year, winning a higher percentage of service and return points than Sakkari.

Again, it might be the recency bias coming to the forefront of the market's mindset here, though, with Sakkari pretty comfortably easing through her three matches here to date, and Pegula having more battles in hers, against opponents ranked outside the top 50. However, on longer-term data, Pegula certainly isn't without a chance here and it wouldn't surprise me at all if she ended up progressing from this.