The upsets dried up a bit today with only Vinci’s loss considered as somekind of a shock given the ranking of her and that she won the first set 6-0..

Saturday offers a lot of fireforks!

(15) Madison Keys v (20) Ana Ivanovic

Both girls have been incredibly inconsistent of late and are currently fighting for a top 20 position by the end of the tournament.

Madison burst into the spotlight 1 year ago when she made it all the way to the Aus Open SF where she was stopped by the eventual champion and nemesis for many – Serena Williams.

She was unable to take full advantage of her improved ranking and spent the whole 2015 scrambling on the back end of the top 20.

Madison has won only 4 of 11 matches while being favourited between 1.50-1.99 in the last 12 months and came in Melbourne without any tune-up tournaments while Ana participated in 2 and lost in R1 in both.

Keys played against 2 players within top 75 of the rankings here while this will be the Serb’s first encounter with someone within top 100.

Ana, who dropped out of top 20 for the first time since January 2012, will re-enter back only if Madison don’t make the Semis.

The Serb can turn from hot to cold in really fast and if she can rediscover her form she can push the American to unforced error galore. This whole match will depend who can keep the unforced error count while viciously attack the opponent’s lack of top notch defensive skills and questionable serving.

Ivanovic is 92-9 all time on Grand Slams after winning the first set, but only 13-35 when she loses the opening one..

Ana won the only meeting in 2014 in Madrid

(21) Ekaterina Makarova v (9) Karolina Pliskova

The most evenly placed match in the 3rd round is this one between the defending semifinalist from last year Katya and the always improving flat hitter – Karolina Pliskova
The market just can’t separate them, but if we look into their respective records in Australia, and h2h the gap should have been bigger in favour of the Russian.

Makarova had a leg injury in Washington last year, and despite she played in the US Open and lost in the 4th round she shut her season and missed the reminder of the season. Her ranking of course suffered as she dropped out of top 20 and now has lot of points to defend while trying not to drop of top 30 as well.

This is a rematch of their meeting on the same round last year, a 64 64 victory for Makarova. The Russian leads the h2h 2-0 and still hasn’t lost a set vs the Czech. With each meeting the odds on Karolina get shorten though. She was 2.90 in Pattaya, 2.27 last year in Melbourne and now is even.

The Czech was tested by Goerges in her 2nd round match in overall very low quality match, but as soon as the first set ended the German started spraying errors around that helped Karolina’s cause a lot.
Ka. Pliskova has always lacked good results in Grand Slams as she has never got passed a 3rd round in a Major while Makarova doesn’t have a QF appearance only in Roland Garros from the big 4.

Is this finally the time when the Czech makes that step in order for a top 10 entry or her struggles at this stage of the tournament will haunt her once again?

(18) Feliciano Lopez v (10) John Isner

Those 2 big serving guys have split their 6 meetings, but Feliciano has a 2-0 edge when it comes to Grand Slam encounters – 2012 in Aus Open (5 sets where only the final was rout) and 2014 in Wimbledon (a 4 set affair that was only a game away to be decided in tiebreaks).

Isner hasn’t dropped a set as he threw 37 and 20 aces respectively to get through Janowicz and Marcel Granollers. Feliciano had a tough encounter with Guido Pella in R2, who extended the match to a 5 set thriller with some great patience and shot selection when his back was up against the wall. Lopez’s 42 aces and 97 total winners were just too much for teh Arentinian in the end.

Odds on Isner are getting shorter, presumably because of the fatigue factor that may come into play if this again goes the distance and the American is 14-4 all time in Grand Slams when he is priced just under 1.50, and last lost a match in that odds range in US Open 2013 – to Philipp Kohlschreiber.

This is extremely close to call as probably most of the sets will be decided by tiebreaks and the American has the edge for this year 4-1 compared to Lopez’s 2-2 (2-3 if we count Kooyong as well) and in their careers Isner holds 67% (166-80) to 53% (78-69) in long game decisions on hard courts alone.