Australian Open Betting / Jack Houghton / 14 January 2012 /

With significant doubts about the world's top-four, it might be worth looking to the early-season Heineken Open for back-to-lay opportunities, says Jack Houghton.

Shovelling sand with a tennis racket. That's how I'd describe the last few days of data trawling, as I attempted to find a statistical edge with which to approach the Australian Open. Lots of energy has been expended; I just hope the few grains I've shifted are valuable.

For a few years now I've wondered what gives the best indication of success in the first grand slam of the year. The media naturally latch on to the ATP Tour warm up events at the start of January - the Brisbane International, the Chennai open, the Qatar Open, the Sydney International, and the Heineken Open - but is there any quantifiable evidence that they give any meaningful clues as to who might play well in Melbourne?

Or are we better to look back to the tail-end of the previous season, assuming that the players who were dazzling before the Christmas break will maintain that form into the new year?

Or are neither of these factors of any significance, with the better approach being to assess the consistent performers throughout the whole of the previous season and assume that, with a rest behind them, they will again begin to dominate?

The market seems to favour the latter approach, with the dominant player of 2011 - Djokovic - the short-priced favourite at [2.48] to win the Australian Open; with the next three in the world rankings from last year clumped together in a hotchpotch of co-second-favouritism, to the near exclusion of any other players.

The statistics certainly suggest there is merit in the market view. The winner of the Australian Open in the last five years was neither a finalist in any of the Tour warm-up events, nor a finalist from the preceding year's ATP Finals, telling us that players who were perhaps burnt-out at season end, and take a while to get moving in January, are more than capable of finding top form in Melbourne.

With the back-to-lay options that Betfair offers, though, it's not entirely necessary to be able to find the winner of this year's Australian Open. Instead, finding which big-priced player might progress late in to the tournament could be enough to turn a tidy profit, and, for this, the pre-Melbourne tournaments do offer some clues.

I looked at every finalist from one of the Tour warm-up events in the last ten years, and tracked the progress they subsequently made at the Australian Open, against the progress they would have been expected to make according to their world ranking, to see if there were any patterns. I also looked at how the finalists from the preceding year's ATP Final fared.

Unsurprisingly, given that only the top-eight in the world compete, the ATP Finals proved the most reliable indicator of who would progress furthest in Melbourne the following January. However, given this ability-weighting in its favour, it wasn't that far ahead of the lower-profile warm-up events, suggesting lesser players are able to capitalise on getting their game firing earlier in the season, and carrying their form into the Australian Open.

Surprisingly, though, is that it is not the high-profile, million-dollar, Qatar Open that scores most highly when predicting Australian Open success. Rather, it is the lowly Heineken Open, in New Zealand, which only returns a few hundred results on Google News, compared to the thousands returned by the other warm-up tournaments of the year, that gives us the best early-season indication of form.

In previous years, the likes of Ferrer, Del Potro and Robredo have used the Heineken as a platform for going deep in Melbourne, so whilst it's understandable that Sean Calvert has plumped for Tsonga to win the first grand slam of the year - who lifted the Qatar Open trophy and was a finalist in last year's ATP Finals - those looking for bigger-priced options could do worse than backing Ferrer ([130.0]) and Rochus ([1000.0]), with the intention of trading out as the tournament progresses.

Both players have easy enough draws, and with concerns around the form of the world's top four, there's a good chance this year's Australian Open will provide a surprise winner.

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