Roddick & Nadal to cruise into quarters
Australian Open Tennis 
/ Tony Keen / 24 January 2010 / Leave a comment Bet Now View Market
I would suggest putting your money on the American to make it yet another ‘straight sets’ victory over the Chilean
Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal will move through to the quarter finals of the Australian Open with straight-sets victories over their fourth-round opponents, says Tony Keen.
Roddick (USA) vs. Gonzalez (CHI)
Fernando Gonzalez was made to work extremely hard in his third-round match, having to twice come from a set down before eventually prevailing, 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 1-6 6-3 6-4 over Evengy Korolev.
The Chilean was lucky to come away with the win when one takes into account the fact that he served four fewer aces than his opponent, committed nine more errors and hit one less winner.
While Gonzalez battled to overcome Korolev, Andy Roddick eased to a 6-7 (4-7) 6-4 6-4 7-6 (7-3) victory over Spaniard Feliciano Lopez.
Roddick smashed 54 winners, including 29 aces, and made just 21 errors.
Gonzalez will need to take his game to another level if he is to have any hope of overcoming the world number seven. This may seem an unlikely prospect given Roddick has won eight of his 11 meetings with Gonzalez, including six of the past seven, the most recent of which came at the corresponding stage of the 2008 US Open. Three best-of-five set matches have been played between this pair, all won by Roddick, two of which were taken out in three sets.
Given Roddick's record against Gonzalez, and the world number 11's less than convincing performance in the third round, I would suggest putting your money on the American to make it yet another 'straight sets' victory over the Chilean.
Ivan Karlovic (CRO) vs. Rafael Nadal (ESP)
Ivan Karlovic booked a fourth-round showdown with defending champion Rafael Nadal after a 6-3 3-6 6-3 7-6 (9-7) victory over 24th seed and countryman Ivan Ljubicic.
The giant Croat has a powerful serve capable of causing the best-in-the-world a number of headaches, but it's essentially the only weapon in his arsenal.
Nadal, on the other hand, is able to win points in any number of ways. The classy Spaniard has won two previous meetings with Karlovic and I expect him to make it three from three on Sunday. Nadal took three and half hours to overcome German Philipp Kohlschreiber, 6-4 6-2 2-6 7-5, in a hard-fought encounter in the third round.
This match won't go into four sets as the world number two simply has too many weapons for Karlovic to counter
