Dinara Safina

Dinara Safina has long lived under the shadow of her elder brother, Marat Safin and only emerged at the highest level in her own right last year when she was runner-up in the French Open to Ana Ivanovic. She endeared herself in a huge way to the French crowd, when saving match points in three of her matches and then each time going on to win. One of her victories was against the then World Number One, Maria Sharapova. The win seems to have given Dinara much greater belief in her own considerable ability and she could do something similar here.

Dinara has an all court game, but prefers to remain on the baseline where she can hit the ball very hard and on her day with fantastic accuracy. She can also produce the deftest of drop shots and will be amongst the favourites to bet on at this Australian Open. After her best year to date in 2008, Safina has moved up to third in the World rankings and will be one player that the rest will want to avoid, particularly in the latter stages of the Tournament betting offers. She is clearly the type of player that you must 'kill off' before ever assuming victory, because Dinara Safina simply has no idea when she is beaten.

She is 10/1 to win the Ladies singles in the Australian Open odds.