I’m delighted to share a new feature to this site with a preview for the womens doubles draw in Sydney!  Many thanks to Ivan Xie who has written this piece.  You can follow Ivan on Twitter (@ fanatical tennis) HERE.  He’s at the tournament in Sydney this week and is definitely worth a follow…

In a new feature for the site, I’ll be taking a look at the more underrated side of the tour – the doubles. Quite often, there are many fantastic doubles matches which are more exciting and interesting in comparison to the singles, but yet it is overlooked. With the WTA planning on broadcasting all doubles finals and semifinals matches by 2017, it would be fantastic if doubles could yet again become a more relevant and important aspect of the game in general. Without further ado, here’s a look at the draw…

In this year’s event, the top half of the draw is extremely stacked in comparison to the bottom, where I can only really see one or two teams actually having a chance at winning the title this week. The seeds in the top half are first seeded Raquel Kops-Jones/Abigail Spears; and the third seeded Garbine Muguruza/Carla Suarez Navarro. Quite surprisingly, Kops-Jones and Spears lost their first round match in Brisbane, 6-2 4-6 10-3 to Alla Kudryavtseva/Alexandra Panova, and whilst Kudravtseva especially, is an excellent doubles player, this is not a match they should have lost and I believe that they should be able to perform much better this week, having actually won their first round today. There are a number of regular doubles teams in this half of the draw and one of the most intriguing match ups has to be between Garbine Muguruza/Carla Suarez Navarro and Caroline Garcia/Katerina Srebotnik. Both teams are quite evenly matched and it should be interesting to see who is able to be more aggressive at the net and focus on dominating by pressuring their opponent – personally I think that with their amazing performance last year, Muguruza/Suarez Navarro should be able to narrowly defeat the Brisbane finalists and be able to make it out of their half and into the final.

The bottom half of the draw seems to be the weaker half, especially since the 4th seeds Hao-Ching Chan/Kveta Peschke have not performed well at all and it still remains to be seen if their pairing will work. With Alla Kudryavtseva now partnering with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova this week (her agreed partner for Rio 2016), I would think that they would be keen on performing well this week ahead of the Australian Open. Both players have the ability to dismantle the game of Chan/Peschke, as they both have the power and guile to govern rallies and dictate points. The only other close first round match is the one between Julia Goerges/Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Martina Hingis/Flavia Pennetta. Whilst on the singles court Goerges could easily overpower her opponents, she doesn’t necessarily have the type of game which would be particularly effective on the doubles court and will definitely be a target for Hingis/Pennetta in an attempt to get more unforced errors from Georges, especially if she is not getting enough margin on her shots. Thus, I really do think that Hingis/Pennetta will continue their form from 2014 and will be able to win this one.

This week, I’m honestly expecting my predictions to go horribly wrong, especially since it is the week before the Australian Open, and players in both the singles and doubles draws would not like to injure or tire themselves out before such a big event. But with many top teams losing early in Brisbane, they may be quite focused on gaining some confidence to prepare well for the upcoming slam. Honestly, who knows?

Photo in this post by Jimmie 48 Tennis Photography