World number three Naomi Osaka will be up against the Spaniard and previous year’s runner-up Garbine Muguruza in the fourth round of the 2021 Australian Open on Sunday, February 14, with the match likely to begin at around 11 am local time (12 noon BST or 7 pm Eastern Time previous day). Get the live streaming options of this Naomi Osaka v Garbine Muguruza match along with its preview, head to head, and tips here.
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Naomi Osaka v Garbine Muguruza Head to Head
Osaka and Muguruza, for all the top-level tennis they have played in their career and as contemporary Grand Slam winners, have never played each other before this. A tad surprising!
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Osaka Keeps Drilling Through Her Opponents
We expected Osaka to come through in her third round match against previous year’s quarterfinalist Ons Jabeur, but the manner in which the world number three and 2019 Australian Open winner dismantled her opponent was awe-inspiring.
In a match lasting an hour and 19 minutes, Osaka drilled past Jabeur 6-3, 6-2 to march into the fourth round, where she will face a two-time Grand Slam winner.
Osaka struggled to get her first serves in, getting just 43% of them in but her superior mental strength and form helped the Japanese save six of the seven break-points she faced in the match. As opposed to that, she converted four of the eight she got too, to go with hitting 26 winners spread over the two sets.
Jabeur’s only chance in the first set came when she broke back to bring it back on serve at 3-4 but lost serve again before Osaka served out the set. And then in the second set, she made it two breaks to clinch the match.
Earlier in the tournament, Osaka had sent Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Caroline Garcia and has lost just 13 games spread across the three matches so far.
Muguruza will be a harder test but can anyone deny Osaka starts off a strong favourite?
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Muguruza Mauls Another
If Osaka has had no mercy on her opponents in this tournament, Muguruza’s brutality has been going on since the start of this season. Sure she lost in the third round at the Abu Dhabi Open and was a runnerup at the Yarra Valley Classic but in the nine matches she has won all season, including the two here, not once has she lost more than four games in a set.
On an average, across these nine encounters, she lost less than two games per set, which included a 6-1, 6-1 rout of Zarina Diyas in the third round of the tournament on Friday.
That followed a 6-4, 6-0 victory over Margarita Gasparyan and a 6-3, 6-1 drubbing of Ludmilla Samsonova before the Diyas match in which she needed just 58 minutes on court and took nine games in a row after her opponent had won her first game.
Muguruza’s recent form has been brilliant and against most other opponents she would have even gone in as a favourite. But as the final of the tuneup Melbourne tournament against Ash Barty showed, things could get a tad tight for her against a player like Osaka.
Osaka v Muguruza Prediction and Tip
Osaka starts off at 3/5 to win this and we are backing her to do that despite Muguruza’s strong form.
Tip: Osaka to win: 3/5 (bet365)
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The 2021 Australian Open will be played from February 8 to 21. You can watch & bet on the these matches here. Get your latest premium tennis predictions here.
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