Madison Keys vs Yulia Putintseva Prediction & Betting Tips - WTA Indian Wells

Prediction published on 10/03/2024, 07:00  by Daniel Ngulu in Tennis Predictions

Eighteenth seed Madison Keys and the unseeded Yulia Putintseva will face off next at the Indian Wells Open. The winner of this third-round tie will then battle either Iga Swiatek or Linda Noskova in the fourth round. Madison Keys is making her season debut in this event. The American had missed the first two months of the year due to a shoulder problem. She looked rusty in her second-round victory over the qualifier Hailey Baptiste which lasted for two hours and 43 minutes. Keys won in three sets with the third set requiring a tiebreaker to decide. The American is now up two places to 18th in the live ranking. She has defeated Putintseva twice in three encounters with their last duel coming two seasons ago in Cincinnati. Keys has gone past the third round twice in this event and made the quarters in 2022.

Yulia Putintseva has been in excellent form in her 10th appearance at Indian Wells. She will hope that this is the year she finally goes past the third round. The 29-year-old has won both her rounds without dropping a set and defeated Ekaterina Alexandrova last time out. Putintseva has struggled with inconsistency this season and before arriving here had won the same number of matches as she had lost. She has now compiled a 9-7 record with all 16 fixtures being played on hard courts. Putintseva, who has lost twice in the third round here, has now moved up four places to 75th in the live ranking. The Kazakh’s sole win over Keys came the first time they met, which was back in 2016.