Women's Draw / Gary Boswell / 29 June 2008 / Leave a comment

The Boz is still on the hunt for an outsider in the women's draw but he's starting to get the willies about a Venus v Serena final.......

Half time in the tennis and worth a recce to see how the Wimbledon Ladies outrights portfolio is performing - whether there are any decent plays in the coming second week - and whether it is possible to work out who the devil is going to win!

An open tournament as predicted and a fair share of shock seed eliminations with the defeat of Ivanovic by Ji Zheng perhaps being the most shocking (and most unwelcome to the Boz's portfolio). Despite the acquisition of her first slam title, Ivanovic looks set to continue in the Sharapova mould and blow hot and cold rather than establish consistency. A question mark has returned in the mental toughness box. She has work still to do but my reading of such matters is that mental toughness never gets learned. It's in you or it ain't. What this Wimbledon has taught me is that Ivanovic, like Sharapova, will be a future layable favourite.

Five unseeded players left in the last sixteen with the two Goliath conquerors, Zheng and Kudryavtseva, being the most interesting as both are in quarters of the draw that avoid the Williams sisters until semi final stage. The Zheng quarter features her next opponent Agnes Szavay, who is available at a tasty [90.0] still in the outright market, Nicole Vaidisova [25.0] and Anna Chatvetadze [44.0]. Zheng herself - as the 133 ranked player in the world - is now as short as [40.0] to win the title.

It's an interesting quartet with one of those guaranteed a semi-final place. The value lies in Szavay who has a grand slam quarter-final to her name already and has been a question mark in the wings for a while. The Boz tracks her and knows her well and whilst she is slight and may have to come up with a strategy to handle the power of the Williams sisters, she lacks nothing in court craft and it could be that this is her time to shine. I expect her to go about dealing with Zheng's doubles game with a bit more brain than Ivanovic used.

The Kudryavtseva quarter is also a potential outrights BACK to LAY as it features a guaranteed semi-finalist from Dementieva [25.0], Peer [75.0], Petrova [38.0] and the Russian herself at [55.0]. For me, the weak link in that foursome is the number five seed Elena Dementieva who does not have a naturally grass game and , like Safina before her, will find it tough against the Israeli girl, Shahar Peer, who does.

It looks a typical BOZ strategy to blanket back in these two quarters to guarantee two in the semi-final but I'm actually going to be selective and miss out Dementieva and also Zheng who I think has had her moment.

The other two quarters are dominated by Serena and Venus who are as short as [3.85] and [3.1] in the outrights now and you'll note that the right one is the shorter price! Serena has looked dangerous though and I choose that word advisedly.

Back in 2002/2003 when she was quite simply unbeatable, she was that person who you would not want to meet in a dark alley. Intimidatingly ruthless, bordering on brutal. I laid her in the outrights before this tournament because she had been a shadow of that self leading up and you could argue that the way Kanepi and Mauresmo challenged her in the first sets of her early round games, she is still a tad on the sluggish side and therefore still imminently 'gettable' from a betting perspective.

There is still the comparison to a rhinoceros attempting to dance swan lake about her but I have to say that the point against Mauresmo where she made the get back to reach the lob and replied with an instinctive and frankly brilliant one of her own was a Serena that sent a shiver down my spine. I haven't seen her play like that for five years and if she replicates that in the next few rounds, there will only be Venus to beat her.

That's not a betting situation I relish!

THE BOZ WILL BE PRODUCING THE WIMBLEDON BLOG LIVE ON BETTING.BETFAIR.COM ON MONDAY AND AGAIN ON LADIES FINAL DAY. EMAIL YOUR THOUGHTS ON MURRAY'S CHANCE AGAINST GASQUET AND WHETHER YOU ARE WITH VENUS OR SERENA DIRECT TO HIM AT sw19betfairblogger@hotmail.co.uk

Tags: tennis bets, tennis betting, Wimbledon betting