Venus Williams (1.53) v Na Li (2.8)

Williams lost 7/5, 7/5 the only time these players met before, at the Beijing Olympics. Venus has made steady progress through this tournament, although she is yet to play a top opponent and winning only 59% of points on her first serve against Francesca Schiavone in the last round is a worrying stat.

Since 2003 Venus has lost three of her five Grand Slam quarter-finals on hard courts and while she has won 32 of her last 46 matches against players ranked 9-30 she has won only 19 (41%) in straight sets. More recently she has won just six of her 16 matches against 9-30 ranked players since the 2008 US Open in straight sets, despite winning 12 of the matches. Venus’ struggles in the second half of last season are highlighted by the fact that she has lost six of her last 10 matches that have gone to a deciding set.

Li is playing well and has won 14 of 19 matches back to the start of last years US Open where she reached the quarter-finals. In this time she has beaten top 10 players Viktoria Azarenka and Caroline Wozniacki (twice), with two of those matches going to a final set. In fact should it go to a final set the Chinese player should feel supremely confident, having won nine of her last 10 deciding sets including twice already in this tournament.

Recommendation: Split stake Li to win a set at 2.5, Stan James
                                   Li to win 2-1 at 6, Bet 365

Novak Djokovic (1.45) v Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (3.1)

This is a repeat of the 2008 final when Djokovic won his only Grand Slam to date. That was the first time these players had met and since then they’ve played on five more occasions, with the Frenchman coming out on top on four occasions. Two of Tsonga’s four wins have been 2-1 while the other two have both featured a tie-break and finished with 23 total games.

Djokovic finished last season as the hottest player on tour when he won 29 of 33 matches from Cincinnati through to the end of the year. However, a thrashing at the hands of Fernando Verdasco and then a loss to 17 year-old Aussie sensation Bernard Tomic at the Kooyong Exhibition event directly before this event dampened expectations.

So far the Serb is yet to face a player inside the world’s top 50 and his record against players ranked 4-12 in the world is not great since the start of 2009, as he’s lost nine of 20 such matches. Furthermore he also has a poor record against other established big-hitters Andy Roddick (lost four of their last five meetings) and Fernando Gonzalez (lost two of their three meetings).

Tsonga came through a titanic battle against Nicolas Almagro in the previous round in a high-quality match which saw him hit 106 winners to just 46 unforced errors and win 84% of points on his first serve as Almagro managed to muster just four break points in the match, despite playing the game of his life.

Furthermore, Tsonga has won half the 20 matches he’s played against players in the world’s top eight since the start of 2008. However, 10 of the 17 best-of-three set matches in this sample went to a deciding set, while two of the three best-of-five setters went to a fourth set.

More generally, since 1990 5-16 seeds at the Australian Open have won eight of 21 quarter-finals against 2-4 seeds.

Recommendation: Split stake Tsonga to win at 3.1, Sporting Bet
                                   Over 40.5 games at 2.0, Paddy Power