Australian Open: Women's Prediction, Tips and Odds

The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of the tennis year, starts at Melbourne Park on Monday and Racing Post’s Adrian Humphries has picked out his best bets for the women’s singles, opting for two players who could lift the trophy.

Aryna Sabalenka won this title in 2023 and 2024, victories that helped her to leapfrog long-time world number one Iga Swiatek at the top of the rankings and the oddsmakers reckon that the defending champion, the 9/4 favourite, could again take all the beating on the Victoria hard courts this year.

Swiatek has made it past the last 16 at Melbourne Park only once - in 2022 when she made the semi-finals - and the Pole is 4/1 joint-second favourite along with Coco Gauff.

Sabalenka is likely to be difficult to beat once again, but with doubts over Swiatek’s ability to stay the course in Melbourne’s blinding heat, Gauff has an opportunity to play her biggest role yet in the season’s first major.

Australian Open Women's betting tips and predictions

Coco Gauff to win - 4/1

Coco Gauff ended 2024 playing better than anyone in the women’s game and the 20-year-old has started 2025 in the best way possible.

The American won the WTA Finals in early November, dropping only one set in the Riyadh tournament to final victim Qinwen Zheng.

And Gauff picked up where she left off in the recent United Cup in which she combined with compatriot Taylor Fritz to lift the trophy after winning all of her singles matches in straight sets.

That sent out a big message to Sabalenka that this year’s Australian Open may not be the cakewalk that 2023 and 2024 were for this year’s top seed.

The Saudi Arabia triumph looks to have instilled huge confidence in Gauff, who won her first and only Grand Slam singles crown in the 2023 US Open, and she now looks ready to add to her major tally this season.

But while Gauff may prove the one to beat this year, she is likely to have to be on top of her game from the outset in Melbourne.

She opens with a clash against 2020 Australian Open heroine Sofia Kenin, who showed signs last year that she may be rediscovering her best form sometime soon. That may not be an easy opener, while promising Ukrainian Yuliia Starodubtseva may also prove a stubborn opponent if meeting Gauff in round three.

Naomi Osaka to win - 50/1

Sabalenka heads the bill in the first quarter of the draw, while Swiatek dominates the second quarter. Section three is headed by fourth and sixth seeds Jasmine Paolini and Elena Rybakina, but anyone looking for a second outright interest in the women’s singles is redirected back to Gauff’s quarter, in which Naomi Osaka may not be far from her peak.

Osaka, 27, took a 15-month break from tennis, during which time she became a mother for the first time. But after returning last year, the Japanese ace, Australian Open champion in 2019 and 2021, may now be fit enough to go close to adding to those triumphs down under.

Like Gauff, Osaka has posted some highly encouraging results at the end of 2024 and start of 2025. In Beijing last year she won a set against Gauff before retiring due to injury. And in Auckland in the first week of the season, she made the final in which she led Clara Tauson by a set to nil before having to call time on the title match due to an abdominal injury.

That threatened to put in doubt her return to Melbourne Park, but while the injury has been far from ideal for her Australian Open preparation, the sublimely talented Osaka may still be playing well enough to make life difficult for anyone she comes up against.

Osaka is a 50/1 chance and the world number 50 has the game to make those odds look huge, even with a potential last-16 clash against Gauff a distinct possibility.

Read more tennis betting tips and predictions on site.

Australian Open Women's outright odds

Aryna Sabalenka - 9/4
Coco Gauff - 4/1
Iga Swiatek - 4/1
Elena Rybakina - 8/1
Qinwen Zheng - 14/1
Mirra Andreeva - 22/1
Karolina Muchova - 25/1
Madison Keys - 33/1

View the full market and more odds for the men’s Australian Open Women on site.

Read Australian Open TV channel and live streaming on site.

This article was written by a partner sports writer via Spotlight Sports Group. All odds displayed on this page were correct at the time of writing and are subject to withdrawal or change at any time.