The WTA Adelaide International 2025 will see all of its second round matches played on Wednesday, January 8 with Emma Navarro, Daria Kasatkina and Belinda Bencic in action. Here’s the preview, predictions and tips for these matches from Adelaide.
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Emma Navarro v Ekaterina Alexandrova Preview
Head-to-Head: Their only previous meeting came at the 2023 Wimbledon and Alexandrova had cruised past Navarro there.
The last time these two players had met, things were vastly different. Ekaterina Alexandrova was 21st seed at that Wimbledon while Navarro had only recently celebrated winning her first ever match at a major – which had come at the French Open a few weeks before that.
Fast forward a year and a half and Navarro has waltzed into the top 10 of the WTA Rankings and will be one of the players to watch at the upcoming Australian Open. That’s because she is coming off a quarterfinal appearance at the 2024 Wimbledon and a semifinal at the US Open that followed that.
She will hope to turn things around quickly though as she suffered a shock loss at her Brisbane opener last week, going down to Kimberly Birrell.
And Alexandrova is no pushover. Ranked 27th in the world, she was sent packing in Brisbane by Ons Jabeur but has come back strongly to overcome the 1/3 favourite Leylah Fernandez in the first round here.
While Navarro will still hold the aces, we can expect Alexandrova to not give up that easily.
Navarro v Alexandrova prediction: Navarro to win in three sets: 3/1
Daria Kasatkina v Emerson Jones Preview
Head-to-Head: Kasatkina and Jones have never faced off before this.
Following her surprise third round loss to Polina Kudermetova at the Brisbane International, all eyes were on Daria Kasatkina when she took to court for her opener here at the Adelaide International.
Sure, she was a 3/10 favourite against Olivia Gadecki going into that match but there was that obvious desire to try and get that victory under her belt in the lead-up to the season’s first major.
And Kasatkina did that in fine style too, need an hour and 24 minutes to carve out a 6-2, 6-3 victory.
In doing so, Kasatkina was broken once, having faced six break-points in the encounter but she dished out five breaks of serve to Gadecki.
That’s the kind of form she would like to take to her second round match against the 371st-ranked Emerson Jones. Jones, having lost her opener in Canberra last week, was awarded a wildcard for this one and one might have been excused to think she was only there for the experience.
Instead, she ran through her opponent, Xinyu Wang, breaking her a whopping six times in the match. Wang’s form has been in question for some time now but for Jones to win it 6-4, 6-0 speaks volumes about the Aussie’s confidence too.
Can she transfer that into a bigger result, an upset win over a top-10 player?
Kasatkina v Jones prediction: Kasatkina to win in straight sets: 3/4
Jelena Ostapenko v Madison Keys Preview
Head-to-Head: This is an exciting rivalry with five previous matches having yielded a 3-2 advantage to Keys. In their most recent meeting at the 2023 Qatar Open, Ostapenko had come away a winner though.
There isn’t much to choose between Jelena Ostapenko and Madison Keys, world numbers 17 and 20 respectively at the moment. A look at their head to head, as mentioned above, also points to a possibly tough battle between the two players.
What could separate the two of them is their form at that moment and and there’s some evidence to think that Keys holds the edge on that count.
That’s because the American is coming off a quarterfinal appearance at the Auckland Open last week and was then a crushing winner over Beatriz Haddad Maia in the first round here. It must be quickly added here that Haddad Maia herself is the world’s 16th-ranked player.
On the other hand, Ostapenko was sent packing in the first round at Brisbane last week and here, needed to come back from a set down to beat Magdalena Frech.
We believe Keys will hold the edge but Ostapenko won’t be going down without a fight and a three-setter can be expected.
Ostapenko v Keys prediction: Keys to win in three sets: 3/1
Belinda Bencic v Liudmilla Samsonova Preview
Head-to-Head: There have been five previous meetings between these two players including one at the 2020 Billie Jean King Cup and Samsonova leads Bencic 4-1. Their last match came at the 2023 Canadian Open where Samsonova came away a straight-set winner.
Bencic’s considerable time away from the sport after taking a maternity leave meant she was forced to feature in the qualifiers in this competition and not only was she able to ease her way into the main draw, she went a step further.
In the first round against Anna Kalinskaya, Bencic took a 6-2, 1-0 lead before her Russian opponent was forced to retire from the match because of fitness concerns.
This followed Bencic’s 1-1 record at the United Cup last week where she defeated Chloe Paquet but lost to Jasmine Paolini in the second match.
The former Swiss number one will now take on a far tougher opponent, Liudmilla Samsonova, who hadn’t had a great start to the season last week. Samsonova was sent packing by Polina Kudermetova in her Brisbane opener and looked to be headed the same way in her opener here.
That was before Samsonova came back from the easy loss of the first set to defeat Marie Bouzkova 1-6, 6-4, 6-1.
We can expect a few mistakes in this match given the kind of backdrop that both bring to this encounter but in its own way that could see them take it to the third set.
Bencic v Samsonova prediction: Three sets in the match: 5/4
