Australian Open in Melbourne, semi-finals, Thursday, 25.01.2024
Admittedly, it sounds a little disrespectful, and yet it is somewhere true: the two women’s semi-finals at this Australian Open 2024 couldn’t be more different!
While Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka play an early final in the first match, qualifier Dayana Yastremska will reach for the stars if she also defeats Qinwen Zheng.
The Chinese player is favored in the match due to her world ranking position, but her lead is limited. I will now reveal in my Yastremska Zheng tip why I think the sensational woman from Melbourne will win at least one set. At Happybet, you still get odds of 1.60 for a set win
She’s writing a tennis fairytale that hasn’t happened at the Australian Open for countless years. Dayana Yastremska is the first qualifier to reach the semi-finals since 1978!
She had struggled in the qualifying round, needed three sets and didn’t look like she was going to fire up the turbo in the main draw. But as soon as she got there, she proved us all wrong.
6-1, 6-2 against the seventh seed Markete Vondrousova? We were all amazed for the first time! Yastremska took the momentum straight away, beating Varwara Gratchova 6-3, 6-2.
The fact that she finally dropped a set in the third round was of no consequence in her 6-2, 2-6, 6-1 win over Emma Navarro. It was to remain the only set she lost anyway, right through to the semi-finals.
Viktorija Azarenka, who was considered by some to be one of the favorites for the title, tried her luck in the round of 16, but Yastremska knocked her out of the tournament with a narrow 7-6, 6-4 win.
And then there was the final match against the Czech Linda Noskova, the woman who had upset world number one Iga Swiantek in round three. Yastremska, 23 years old, actually held her nerve again in a strong match.
6-3, 6-4, it’s hard to believe that she is barely in the top 100 in the world rankings (at least as of today)! She reached the final of the Australian Open as a junior, and now she could achieve the same feat at the senior level
She has never met her current opponent before, but will probably be able to live with the fact that she is trailing Qinwen Zheng at odds of 2.70 to 1.40 with our betting providers such as Intertops.
The Chinese player is in 13th place in the rankings, but it was not really to be expected that she would end up fighting for the final. One thing is certain: this is already her best performance at a Grand Slam.
In her first ever semi-final, the 21-year-old was probably also a little nervous, as she had to fight a little harder than Yastremska to make it through to the top four.
She dropped the very first set of the tournament, but still progressed with a 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 win against Ashlyn Krueger. A short time later, she knocked Katie Boulter out of the tournament with a straight 6-3, 6-3 win
Her compatriot Wang Yafan demanded everything from her in the third round, but Zheng was allowed to celebrate late on after a 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 win. So it was all the more pleasing that the semi-finalist was able to save her strength again with a quick 6-0, 6-3 win against Oceane Dodin.
Strength that she urgently needed in the quarter-final against Anna Kalinskaya. After losing a tie-break at the start, the Chinese player got rolling, winning the following sets 6-3, 6-1 to secure her ticket to the penultimate round.
She averages over 80% of the points she wins on her first serves and, at 1.78 meters, she is three centimetres taller than Yastremska
My Yastremska Zheng tip
A qualifier in the semi-finals of the Australian Open, history wants it that way for the first time in 45 years! Dayana Yastremska shows her best side in Melbourne, or is she underestimating her opponents?
That shouldn’t happen to Qinwen Zheng, as she has twice turned around a 0:1 deficit. The Chinese player serves excellently, but Yastremska has the momentum on her side. I therefore can’t imagine that the Ukrainians will be played to the wall here, so my bet is on:
Yastremska takes at least one set
