The WTA Adelaide International 2025 will begin on Monday, January 6 as some of the top players take to court for their first round matches here. Here’s the preview, predictions and tips for these matches from Auckland.
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Daria Kasatkina v Olivia Gadecki Preview
Head-to-Head: This is the first match between Kasatkina and Gadecki.
The world number nine Kasatkina was a runner-up at this event last year and she will be gunning for a similar performance in 2025 as well as she looks to shrug off what transpired in the previous week.
There, Kasatkina had featured at the Brisbane International and the Russian had gone into her third round match against Polina Kudermetova. Kudermetova, who was 7/5 to win it, went on to come back from a set down to upset Kasatkina who will now look to get some positive results under her belt in the lead-up to the Australian Open.
Up against her is Aussie world number 97 who featured in the United Cup earlier this season. She played two matches, losing both to Nadia Podoroska and Katie Boulter.
What made it even tougher to digest was the most games she won in a set was four, easily bowing out of the competition. Can she now put up a fight here?
Kasatkina v Gadecki prediction: Kasatkina to win in straight sets: 5/6
Donna Vekic v Yulia Putintseva Preview
Head-to-Head: This is a long-standing rivalry that goes all the way back to 2013 when they met for the first time in Miami. Vekic had won that first round match but since then they have played a total of six more times and it’s a slender advantage that Vekic has at 4-3. Putintseva has won their last three matches in Brisbane 2020, San Jose 2021 and Wuhan 2024.
A quarterfinalist in this tournament the last time Vekic played here in 2020, she is coming off a terrible start to her season. Ranked 19th in the world, Vekic would have expected to do a lot better than to lose both her opening two matches at the United Cup in the first week of the season.
Making those defeats even worse is that Vekic was a straight-set loser to Leylah Fernandez and Cori Gauff, leading to question-marks around her preparations for the new season.
She has another chance to get rid of those doubts when she faces Putintseva here but her opponent is no pushover. Ranked 29th in the world, Putintseva is two ranks below her career-best and made the third round in Brisbane last week.
While she lost there, the defeat came at the hands of Aryna Sabalenka, which was par for the course anyway. Expect her to smell blood here as she looks to take down the confidence-lacking Vekic.
Vekic v Putintseva prediction: Putintseva to win: 4/6
Emerson Jones v Xinyu Wang Preview
Head-to-Head: Wang and Jones have never faced off before this.
Aussie national Emerson Jones has a wildcard to feature in this competition having entered the week ranked outside the top 350. Even then, that’s her career-best ranking.
What Jones would want to do is put up a better showing than she did in the WTA Canberra competition last week, where she was routed 6-2, 6-3 in the first round by Elsa Jacquemot.
Things could have been a lot tougher here for Jones as she is taking on a player who is herself searching for some form.
Featuring in Brisbane last week, Wang was brushed aside by Polina Kudermetova, winning just four games in the process. As a result she was forced to feature in this week’s competition, and in order to make the main draw Wang played the qualifiers here.
Her wins over Tatjana Maria and Kamila Rakhimova would have helped her a bit and Jones might not be the toughest opening round opponent she would have expected but Wang will need to guard against any form of complacency here.
Jones v Wang prediction: Three sets in the match: 6/4
Ekaterina Alexandrova v Leylah Fernandez Preview
Head-to-Head: There have been three previous meetings between these two players, all of which came in the first rounds of hardcourt competitions between 2022 and 2023. Fernandez won in Adelaide while Alexandrova clinched victories in Cincinnati and at the US Open 2023.
After having had a highly forgettable 2024 season, Alexandrova would have hoped for a better start than she got in Brisbane last week. Admittedly she was a tad unfortunate to have drawn Ons Jabeur in her opener but to lose the manner in which she did might have been a tad unnerving for her.
Alexandrova managed to win just five games in that match and that’s left her with no option but to take on the mantle of featuring in another tournament before the Australian Open.
And to make matters worse, she has drawn Leylah Fernandez here. Once ranked 13th in the world, Fernandez is now outside the top 30 and is 1-1 in main draw matches this year.
As mentioned earlier in this piece, she beat Donna Vekic in the United Cup but fell easily to Cori Gauff. Fortunately for her, Fernandez did not have a lot of trouble getting past Jodie Burrage and Irina Begu in the qualifiers here.
This one seems to be a tough one to call, what with the unknown around Alexandrova’s form. We will have to go with Fernandez to eke out a victory here.
Alexandrova v Fernandez prediction: Fernandez to win in three sets: 3/1
Other Adelaide International 2025 Predictions of the Day
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