The women’s Quarter-Finals conclude this Wednesday, with two high-caliber match-ups. The second ranked woman in the world, Simona Halep, is in action against Victoria Azarenka, number 20 in the world, in what should be an extremely entertaining match. We also have the fourth ranked female in the world, Petra Kvitova, taking on the veteran, Flavia Pennetta. We’re going to break down both matches below…

Petra Kvitova (-285) vs. Flavia Pennetta (+240)

In the first match of the Day 10 on Ashe, Belarus’ Petra Kvitova, takes on Italy’s Flavia Pennetta. Kvitova is looking to reach the U.S. Open Semi-Finals for the first time in her career. Surprisingly enough, Kvitova has never even been in a Quarter-Finals match at the U.S. Open before, and is the first Czech to play in the QF’s since Daja Bedanova in 2001. But don’t forget, this is the same woman who won the 2014 Wimbledon Final, reached the Semi-Finals of the 2012 French Open, reached the Semi-Finals of the 2012 Australian Open, won the 2011 Wimbledon Final, reached the QF’s of the Australian Open in 2011, and reached the Semi-Finals of Wimbledon in 2010…Yeah, THAT Petra Kvitova. So while she may not have experience going deep at the U.S. Open, she’s not a newcomer to playing in the late rounds of a Grand Slam. A lot of experts say that Kvitova’s struggles at Flushing Meadows have nothing to do with her actual play. A big part of her early exits have been attributed to the heat & humidity of the U.S. Open, in direct correlation to Kvitova’s lifelong struggle with asthma.

If playing tennis with asthma isn’t hard enough, Petra managed to contract mononucleosis this summer. It hindered Kvitova’s play for a short period of time, but most wouldn’t be able to tell anything was wrong with her at THIS YEAR’s U.S. Open. Kvitova beat Laura Siegemund, Nicole Gibbs, and Anna Karolina Schmiedlova, all in straight sets, before ending the 16 match winning streak of the UK’s Johanna Konta in the 4th round. Which, was also a straight set victory for Kvitova. Konta didn’t play poorly, Kvitova was just that much better. Her serve was firing on all cylinders and she played the big points extremely well. She only had two break-point opportunities, but converted both at crucial stages of the match to win (7-5, 6-3) the match.

While Kvitova had a pretty favorable draw, as shown above, Pennetta had some tough opponents to get through. The Italian beat Gajdosova, Niculescu, and had the task of beating Cetkovska in the very next match after she shocked Caroline Wozniacki. In the fourth round, Pennetta beat 2012 U.S. Open champion Sam Stosur in straight sets to advance to the Quarter-Finals of the U.S. Open for the sixth time in her career. Kvitova spoke very highly of her opponent, telling the media after beating Konta “Flavia is a good girl, so I’m looking forward for the match. It’s a long time we played each other, I think. I think she’s on fire. She’s playing well here. She beat Sam in two sets. So I think she really has to feel well.”

Kvitova and Pennetta have split the H2H (3-3) against each other, but Pennetta has lost their last three matches, with her most recent win against the Czech, being in 2010 at the Fed Cup. The last match they played was on grass in 2012 at the Olympics.

Victoria Azarenka (-205) vs. Simona Halep (+175)

The first thing about this match that you probably noticed, is that Simona Halep is the number two ranked woman in the world, playing against the number twenty ranked woman in the world, and she’s the underdog. Makes you scratch your head, no? You’ll soon see that the oddsmakers have a method to their madness…

First of all, Halep struggled (6-7(6-8), 7-5, 6-2) to overcome both an injury and fatigue, just to get past her fourth round opponent, Sabine Lisicki. She looked far from a convincing number two seed as she smashed and threw her racquet out of frustration. Her movement was  significantly hindered by a left leg injury that caused her to hunch over in pain, kneel, squat, and stretch out her leg numerous times throughout the match. Her left leg was heavily strapped, she needed medical attention numerous times during the match, and Halep even said it was very sore after the match concluded. To give you an idea of how poorly Halep played, there were 17 service breaks, nine of which were in the second set, and both players committed a total of 105 unforced errors. This will also be Halep’s first Quarter-Finals appearance at the U.S. Open, and the first time a Romanian made the QF’s at Flushing Meadows since Irina Spirlea beat Monica Seles to advance to the 1997 U.S. Open Semi-Finals. Azarenka, on the other hand, made it through to the QF’s with ease, defeating American Varvara Lepchenko, in straight sets. She has now reached the Quarter-Finals in four straight years, having been the runner-up in 2012 and 2013.

Azarenka and Halep have played each other twice in their respective careers. Once at Doha in February of 2012, and once on the Indoor Hard Courts of Linz in October of 2012. Azarenka won both of those matches with ease (6-3, 6-1) & (6-1, 6-1). You could say Azarenka presents a bad matchup for Halep, or you could argue that Halep is much improved from three years ago. Halep herself thinks that she’s much improved, telling the media “I’m a different player since then. I’m stronger mentally. I’m stronger physically. Everything is different. I believe that I can win it.”

Three years ago, Azarenka was number one in the world, while Halep was only ranked 63rd at Doha and 46th at Linz. Since then, Halep has won 11 titles, and reached a total of 16 WTA Finals. She’s reached 5 WTA Finals in 2015 alone, winning Shenzen, Dubai and Indian Wells. The twenty-three year old Halep, has also done very well in Grand Slams since her last meeting with Azarenka. Halep reached the 4th round of the U.S. Open in 2013, the QF’s of the Australian Open in 2014, the Finals of the French Open in 2014, the Semi-Finals of Wimbledon in 2014, and the QF’s of Australian Open in 2015. However, besides Halep’s Australian Open showing, she has not performed well at Grand Slams in 2015. She was eliminated in the 2nd round of the French Open by Mirjana Lucic-Baroni (+1340), and she was eliminated in the 1st round of Wimbledon by Jana Cepelova (+1310), both of which were pretty huge upsets.