Women's Draw / Gary Boswell / 18 June 2009 / Leave a comment

Gary Boswell watches the warm-up tournaments, crunches the numbers and applies his ratings system before talking us through who he's backing and laying for the ladies' crown at Wimbledon.

The Wimbledon Women's winner is a Layer's market. It's not difficult to come up with reasons why all the top seeds and fancies won't win and with the Williams sisters taking a whopping 45% out of the over round, it's seriously time to get the calculator out and do some maths! There's a profitable portfolio in there somewhere!

Of course the winner still needs to be found and that's far from easy with the competition having the wide open look that has become the norm in recent Women's Grand Slam events. I've been asserting for a while that the time for the new breed of young players to break through is upon us but that hasn't really been happening and the last four slam events have been won by experienced heads.

So is Wimbledon 2009 with its revolutionary roof the signal for the start of a new era?

The answer could lie in the two wildcards that have been given to Britain's world girl No.1 sensation Laura Robson currently priced at [660.0] with Betfair and the phenomenal Portuguese 16 year old Michelle Larcher de Brito, [690.0] to win her maiden voyage to SW19.

I first mentioned Larcher de Brito in this column twelve months ago as a tennis talent to keep one's eye on. Little did I know back then that as well as a seriously sweet backhand, she has a competition grunt that makes Maria Sharapova sound like a gnat! This girl is LOUD and was comprehensively booed by those raucous French crowds at Roland Garros, presumably for being unsportswomalike. Was it brinkmanship when Lasker used to blow cigar smoke over the board during the Chess world championships? Was John Mc Enroe doing his 'You cannot be serious' deliberately to unsettle his opponent? Is Larcher De Brito making such a "racket", so to speak, to deliberately upset her colleagues?

It's make your mind up time at SW19 this year and whatever else happens, you will not be able to ignore the precocious teenager for whom dignity and finesse are words cast out of the dictionary! Her antics might cause the furore surrounding the fact that the world Junior No.1 is British to take something of a back seat, and all bodes well for Laura Robson to start her journey to emulating Virginia Wade. She's a back to lay in my book despite her disappointing performance on the clay in France.

My outrights portfolio generally consists of Back to Lays and identifying long priced competitors who are marked up on their non-grass exploits. They need to give us a couple of wins in the early rounds to yield a profit and several fit the bill to my eye with top of the list being last year's semi-finalist, the Chinese No.2 Zheng Jie who is a stunning [220.0] in the current market. She suffered defeat at Eastbourne this week at the hands of another candidate, the Canadian Aleksandra Wozniak [150.0] who also has the scalp of new French Open Champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the bag.

Both of these look way over priced to me as indeed does last year's conqueror of Jelena Jankovic, Tamarine Tanasugarn - another grass specialist who currently trades at a remarkable [550.0].The reason for these inflated prices is the aforementioned cramped odds on the Williams sisters who dominated last year's event. Serena is a skinny [3.85] and is once more inexplicably considered favourite over her Wimbledon specialist sister Venus, who trounced her again last year and yet trades at the longer [5.4]. Do not ask me to explain the logic of that! I state simply that I opposed both sisters systematically last year at all events except Wimbledon and just about managed to break even.

All profits came from supporting them at SW19 where they can quite simply never be written off. Thus the market is as cramped as it is but with several other short pricers being imminently layable there is a strong case for laying both sisters this year and balancing the liability against the other short priced lays. I consider Sharapova a mile too short at [10.0] based on her exits at Roland Garros and Edgbaston, and the highly dubious state of her shoulder. Safina is still world number one but dislikes grass and showed once more in France that she hasn't yet developed the mental strength to handle Grand Slam finals. Her fourth poor show in a final in under 12 months. A definite lay again for me at [11.5]. Add in Ana Ivanovic at [26.0] and Jelena Jankovic at [42.0] - the two Serbs who also made it to world number one and then wilted and neither of whom like grass - and you see why the top of the market is there to be taken on.

So who will win it? It's a long shortlist but I've got the rapidly improving Magdalena Rybarikova [150.0], grass specialist and inform Australian Samantha Stosur [46.0], hardhitting Vera Zvonzreva [120.0] and the talented Dane - shortening in the betting by the day - Caroline Wozniacki [25.0] alongside my old faves Marion Bartoli [65.0]and Elena Dementieva [42.0] all as back to lays.

Can all those be bet and still a profit be made? Answer yes, especially when balanced in with the Lay to Backs I'll be doing on the short pricers I consider vulnerable.

For those not yet au fait with the concept of Lay to Backs in outright markets, consider that Dinara Safina was [3.85] to Lay before Roland Garros began and [1.86] before her quarter final game against Viktoria Azarenka after winning all her previous games easily. When she lost the first set 6-1 to Azarenka, she drifted out to [9.0] in the live outright market and was quickly hedged by the ever portfolio-conscious Boz who instantly went green on the entire market.

That is of course why I love Betfair and why I particularly love whopping great sporting events like Wimbledon where I have absolutely no idea who might win (only a rough idea of who might not!!).

The Boz's recommended lay to backs for the 2009 women's Wimbledon Singles
Serena Williams at [3.85]
Venus Williams at [5.4]
Maria Sharapova at [11.0]
Dinara Safina at [11.5]
Ana Ivanovic at [26.0]
Jelena Jankovic at [42.0]