US Open Women's Singles Day 5 Tips: Wozniacki with market edge over Brady

• Swiatek expected to ease into round four

• Gauff and Rybakina also in action

• Fascinating match-up between Wozniacki and Brady

Numerous strong favourites on day five

It's top half of the draw action in New York in the women's singles on Friday, which means that Iga Swiatek, Cori Gauff and Elena Rybakina are all in action as they attempt to progress to round four.

Tournament favourite Swiatek is priced up as a virtual bye against qualifier Kaja Juvan, while Gauff looks a little short-priced at 1.182/11 for her meeting with Elise Mertens. Rybakina joins the likes of Jelena Ostapenko, Belinda Bencic, Karolina Muchova and Xinyu Wang as favourites priced at around 1.251/4 to 1.402/5 to get wins.

Considering that seven of the eight pre-match favourites on Friday are priced below, and in some cases, well below 1.402/5 it's clear that the day five schedule is pretty much full of theoretical mismatches and on paper at least, players with significant ability differentials to their opponents.

Wozniacki starting to impress after three year absence

The one match where the market expects both players to compete is fascinating, with wild card Caroline Wozniacki facing home player Jennifer Brady. Wozniacki's return to tour after a three-year absence picked up momentum with a shock win over Petra Kvitova in round two, and it's tough to argue that victory wasn't fully merited, with the Dane creating more than double the break point chances than Kvitova.

Wozniacki's foundation of that win was her serve, which consistently held off the pressure from Kvitova, winning 63% of points on serve and 74% on her first serve. Those numbers are actually better than her year's hard court data in 2018, when she became world number one for the first time, so it looks like her comeback is well and truly picking up speed.

Albeit from a fairly small data sample, it already looks like she's an above-average player on tour already, with combined service/return points won data already around the 104% on hard court this year.

Brady's level also tough to assess

We have to go back to 2021 for opponent Jennifer Brady to produce similar numbers on the surface, having missed two years herself with a knee injury between August 2021 and July 2023.

Her return has been something of a mixed bag, with a good win over Jelena Ostapenko and significantly testing Elena Rybakina in Montreal, but losing against lowly opposition too. Several bagel losses were in recent matches in 2023 as well.

It's tough to know with any degree of certainty where either player is currently. I'm a little stronger on Wozniacki but not to the extent of disputing the market price, which has the former world number one trading at 1.9010/11 on the Exchange at the current time.