Major champion Sloane Stephens was among the early casualties with local hope Lulu Sun also knocked out. Her conqueror, Rebecca Marino, will fancy her chances against Bernarda Pera and here is more good news for the Americans with Volynets and An Li facing off for a spot in the quarter finals. Naomi Osaka was tested in her opening match and will need to improve if she is to make a deep run.
Marino took it to Lulu Sun and the Auckland crowd to earn a place in the second round. She has now won 14 of her last 17 matches, albeit with many of those at ITF level. Must give her credit for the win over Sun who is in career-best form and she deserves to be the favourite here. Pera accounted for a qualifier in her opening match to improve to 8-3 in her last 11 matches. That said, the win over Jiminez Kasintseva was the first time in five matches that she won at least 50% of 2nd serve points. See her falling short of that against Marino and that will put her under constant pressure to hold serve.
There is a long road ahead for Osaka if she is to ever contend for the biggest titles in women’s tennis. She was anything but dominant against 220th ranked Lina Glushko but managed to win 9 of the last 10 points when they were locked at 4-4 in the second set. Grabher is a significantly better player than her current ranking suggests and has been as high as #54 in the world a little more than a year ago. Her best results have come on clay and that tells us that she is a genuine ball striker from the back of the court. Fits the mould of the type of player that Osaka has struggled against and will be winning more games than expected.
Both women are coming off tight three set victories in their respective opening matches. Volynets found her best tennis in the deciding set against Erika Andreeva while Ann Li came from a break down in the third set to beat Sloane Stephens. The pair have met before with their only prior clash coming last year on clay in Charleston. Volynets came from a set down and won 12 of the last 15 games. A dominant finish like that is difficult to ignore and think that she will be winning at least one set by a double break margin. As a result, we will be backing her to cover the games handicap
Kenin takes on Tauson in the most intriguing match of the day. The pair locked horns twice last year with Tauson winning in straight sets on clay at the French Open before Kenin was able to get revenge late in the year in a three-set thriller in Tokyo. That match ended 7-6 in the deciding set on a similar surface to this one and there are some key takeaways from it. Although it was extremely close on the scoreboard, Kenin created significantly more opportunities with 2 break from 6 opportunities while Tauson converted her one and only chance. Using that as a guide, Kenin should again be able to generate more chances so we have to be with her here.