Paula Badosa vs Daria Kasatkina: Betting on the Spaniard

Badosa finished last season on an optimistic note and confidently started the new season. However, despite the current state of affairs and the opponents' ranking, Daria has confidence, and the Spaniard will have to work hard to make it to the finals of the Sydney tournament.

In Adelaide, she lost in two sets to Azarenka. However, already in Sydney, Badosa showed that she had not lost her skills, knocking out Ostapenko, Tomljanovic and Bencic one by one. The Spaniard got through the first two with flying colours, but against the Swiss player, Badose had to fight hard. The match lasted two hours and 37 minutes. In the first set, the opponents played tie-break, won by Paula 8:6. The Spaniard had 11 aces and won 46% of points on the second serve of Belinda. This statistic shows that Badosa, at least visually, has no weaknesses.

As we expected, Daria managed to beat Muguruza. This is partly due to the excellent form of the Russian, but during the match, Garbiñe made a lot of unnecessary mistakes. The Spaniard noticeably had problems with receiving and the smashes, which took away the nervous energy of the Spaniard and gave confidence to the Russian. Daria had a lot of aspects on her side, and Kasatkina took advantage of it, having outplayed her rival in two games. Daria had beaten Mertens and Kenin in front of Muguruza. Overall, the upcoming match will be Daria's eighth official match of the season.

Despite the underestimation of the Russian, we still side with the Spanish athlete in this match. Muguruza defeated Badosa at the Final Tournament, but it was different this time. If Muguruza had been in great shape in Sydney, Daria couldn't have thrashed the world's third-ranked player. Badoza, as the Sydney competition shows us, is not much inferior to herself from the time of the Finals.