Who says home advantage doesn't matter in tennis?

Truths, Lies and Tennis Statistics / Matthew Walton / 20 September 2007 / Leave a Comment

"Magical" Matthew Walton looks at whether playing in your home tournament gives you an edge

Victor Hanescu's recent run to the final of his native BCR Open (held in his home town of Bucharest) highlighted the genuine positive effect competing in your own backyard has on players. Prior to this event Hanescu was trading at well in excess of 50.00, had not reached an ATP final all year and had a poor enough world ranking that, unseeded, he had to beat four players ranked in and around the world's top 50 to make the final.

This stellar run highlights the undoubted advantage certain players get in playing in front of their home fans, raising their game to new heights.

Take a look at all the events played on the main ATP tour so far this year.

Some, quite naturally, are played in non-tennis playing countries. And, by that, we mean countries with players ranked too low to benefit from such native goodwill. These broadly account for 19% of the tournaments played (10 of 53) - Qatar, India, New Zealand, Mexico, the UAE, Morocco, Canada, Poland, Portugal and China.

You could even throw into the mix England, if you were being uncharitable, as Andy Murray aside we're a bit thin on the ground in terms of talent. That would provide three more tournaments with Queen's, Nottingham and Wimbledon taking us up to 13 of the 53 events (25%).

Of the remaining events the findings are most interesting. From those tournaments there have been 7 won by native players and 9 further events where the runner-up was a home player. We've even had two further runners-up, making 11 in total, in events where the winner was also from the host nation (Washington and New Haven). A domestic 1-2, so to speak.

Taking the 7 winners we find Roddick in Washington, Blake in New Haven and Nadal in Barcelona. No great surprises there. But what about Almagro in Valencia? He's a good player but his win in his native Spain was his second ATP title ... one in Valencia in 2006 and one in Valencia in 2007. Get it!

It's the wins of Kohlschreiber in Munich, Monaco in Buenos Aires and Simon in Marseille that raise an eyebrow. All represented maiden tour wins for each player and all were backable at big prices - i.e. 25.00 and above.

There have also been 11 runners-up, some of whom appeared from so far off the radar as to be quite remarkable such as Chris Guccione in Adelaide, Peter Wessels in s'Hertogenbosch, John Isner in Washington and Hanescu in Romania.

Now you might say 25% (13/53) are discounted for non-tennis reasons, 13% (7/53) are winners, 17% (9/53) runners-up ... that still leaves a big gap of 45% in your argument. Fair point.

The reply would be threefold. Firstly, the list of 24 events which appear to show little, or no, home bias include Grand Slam events such as the Australian Open, French Open and US Open plus several blue-riband events like Rome, Indian Wells and Miami as well as Kitzbuhel, Stuttgart and Rotterdam. Here, the winners are often the very top players and that severely limits the chances of home prospects to flourish.

Secondly, there are still several very notable efforts by home players, even in defeat. Flavio Saretta made the SF's of Costa Do Sauipe (Brazil), Filippo Volandri beating Roger Federer in R2 of the Rome Masters, Robin Haase making the SF's in Rotterdam, Sam Querrey reaching the SF's in Indianapolis (beating Ivo Karlovic en route). There was even Steve Darcis winning his maiden title in Holland (well, he's a Belgian but it's close enough!).

Thirdly, we're only looking at this year. Go back over the preceding years and the record books are littered with such examples. Take the above example of Peter Wessels in s'Hertogenbosch. He was ranked 488th in the world prior to this event.

And who was the lowest ranked player to ever win an event? Lleyton Hewitt, when he was 550th in the world. And where was he playing? Yes, you guessed it, Adelaide in his native Australia.

Plenty of food for thought. Whilst you'd be foolish to back players on solely nationalistic grounds you should certainly add a little value in players performing at home (or certainly close by) and even if you don't apply it to outright markets then do consider its merit in match bets, especially early doors.

A little local knowledge can lead to handsome returns on the exchanges.