The WTA Madrid second round continued on Friday with Sofia Kenin set to face Qinwen Zheng in a matchup that carried more weight than the rankings suggested. Kenin beat Ashlyn Krueger in the first round, while Zheng had not played since Miami in March and was expected to be a little rusty after more than three weeks without a match.
The numbers made the case for Zheng anyway. She was the No. 7 seed, had lost to Aryna Sabalenka in Miami in March, and the preview said she should straightforwardly win the match, with Zheng -1.5 sets offered as a value bet at 1.73 on 1xBet and 1.73 @Bet365.
That made the contrast sharper because both players have already lived much larger versions of this stage. Zheng and Kenin had both played in a major final before, and both had once been ranked in the top five, even if they were now outside the top 35. Kenin arrived in Madrid after playing in April in Charleston and Madrid, but she had lost eight of her last 10 matches, a run that left little margin for error against one of the tour’s hardest hitters.
The matchup also fit a wider pattern in Madrid this week, where the second round was unfolding against a backdrop of players returning from breaks or trying to break out of slumps. Karolina Pliskova and Maria Sakkari both took last week off, neither of them played in Stuttgart or Rouen, and their meeting had already happened seven times. Pliskova last competed in the Linz tour event two weeks ago, while Sakkari chose to play in the Billie Jean King Cup.
Elsewhere on Thursday, Solana Sierra upset Dayana Yastremska in the first round of Madrid, a result that came after Sierra had lost four of five and seven of nine matches. Magdalena Frech also came in having lost her last four matches, underscoring how quickly the draw can turn on form rather than reputation.
For Kenin, Friday’s match was another chance to turn a difficult spring into something more durable. For Zheng, it was a test of whether a long break and a slow start could still end the way the market expected. In Madrid, that is often where the real match begins.