Tennis Betfacts / Matthew Walton / 28 November 2008 / Leave a comment

As the players recharge their batteries and asses the rights and wrongs of the season just gone, Betfair backers should do exactly the same in order to make the best bets in 2009, says Matthew Walton.

The end of the ATP Tour for 2008 gives us a couple of weeks to catch our breath ... before we plough headlong back into the action for 2009 as Doha, Chennai and Brisbane stage the first events of new season.

What the players will now do is re-charge their batteries, work on the areas of their game which need improving, learn from their losses and aim to improve upon their successes for the year ahead.

And as Betfair backers, we should be no different.

This short break gives us the chance to review what has happened during the past 11 months in the world of professional tennis and use our findings to improve our own performance for the new season. In other words, make more money on Betfair!

Last week we took a look at the Fab Four of Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray (read full article here) and in the coming weeks we'll discuss the movers and shakers on tour, who's hot and who's not for 2009 and also highlight some key betting hints to make your future tennis betting even more profitable.

This time around we're looking at the subject of 'new kids on the block'. Which players have appeared for the first time on the roll-call of champions in 2008, what kind of profile they had and who can we expect to shed their maiden tag during 2009.

With regards to the main tour we saw no fewer than 11 first time winners in 2008.

To put this into some kind of context, our studies show the average number of first time winners during the 1980's was 12.42 per year. This rose slightly in the 1990's up to an average yearly total of 13.0.

So far in the 2000's we've seen annual figures of 9, 10, 12, 9, 13, 8, 11, 5 and now 11 this past year. That makes an average of 9.77 first time winners on tour each year of this century.

Taking that figure in its most literal sense, from an annual schedule of 66 tournaments, take out the Grand Slams and Masters Series competitions (never the easiest to win for a first title) and that leaves 53 events to consider.

Rounding up the 9.77 average to a figure of 10 maiden winners per year, from those 53 possible titles you'd have a maiden winner 19% of the time - which would make a first time winner of any run-of-the-mill tournament around the [5.5] mark.

As for the first timers of 2008 they were Kei Nishikori (age 18, Delray Beach), Juan Martin Del Potro (19, Stuttgart), Marin Cilic (19, New Haven), Sam Querrey (20, Las Vegas), Sergiy Stakhovsky (22, Zagreb), Marcel Granollers (22, Houston), Jo-Wilfred Tsonga (23, Bangkok), Philipp Petzschner (24, Vienna), Victor Hanescu (26, Gstaad), Albert Montanes (27, Amersfoort) and Igor Kunitsyn (27, Moscow).

None of them winning, it has to be said, stellar events. Only the win of Juan Martin Del Potro came in a International Series Gold event, all the rest were in the regular - what you might call 'bog-standard' - International Series tournaments.

Their average age, 22.54, is in line with the general view that if players are going to win on tour, they tend to do it early in their career. The oldest first time winners in 2008 were both 27 (Montanes & Kunitsyn) and you won't find too many examples of players older than that landing a first tour win.

Added to that, eight of the players were contesting their first ATP final, i.e. they weren't serial losers. For both Hanescu and Tsonga this was their second career final and for Montanes his 5th career decider. The other eight players were all playing in, and winning, their first final.

One other vital point to note as well, every one of these players had won previously on the Challenger Tour. Of course, every player will have won tournaments as a junior as they progress up to professional status but the Challenger Tour, just below the main tour, isn't a million miles away from the standard of these weak main tour events. Hence, if you can win on that circuit, you can easily progress to winning on the big stage.

Tsonga had won no less than eight of these lesser titles whilst Hanescu, Montanes and Kunitsyn had all landed five events apiece. Querrey and Del Potro (three each), Granollers and Cilic (two) and the rest had all registered a single success in the past. In short, they all knew how to win.

So what can we say about first time winners? Broadly speaking they (a) win low key events (b) tend to be aged from 19-23 (c) this is either their first or second tour final (d) they have previously won on the Challenger Tour (e) there will be somewhere between 8-12 such winners in 2009.

Using this photo-fit who should you be looking for on Betfair next year as a potential first time winner?

Well, top of the list would be Ernests Gulbis, the talented young Latvian. He's 20, won four times on the Challenger Tour and looks a decent prospect. A couple of clay-courters would be the Argentine, Eduardo Schwank and, the Brazillian, Thomaz Bellucci. Both have won four titles at the lesser grade and have shown flashes of ability on the main tour. Jeremy Chardy, a young French player could also claim a first crown.

Others like Viktor Troicki of Serbia and Simone Bolelli of Italy - both of whom made a first ATP final in 2008 - also fit the bill of potential first timers and possibly Janko Tipsarevic. We say possibly as the Serb is prolific at Challenger level, with nine victories, but might just be one of those perennial bridesmaids who always finds one too good. He is 24 after all.

These are just a few names to look out for in 2009. As we know, every year there will be new winners on tour (just as there are players who drop off the roll of honour) and often they go in at big prices. Most of the 11 players who won for a first time in 2008 were [51.00] plus, even better than [101.00].

That being the case, a little study is perhaps no bad thing. More so if it can make your new year on Betfair even more profitable than this year has been!