Wonderful World of Tennis / Matthew Walton / 25 January 2008 /

"Magical" Mathew Walton urges us to follow the Challenger Tour to discover future contenders

The success of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the Australian Open has been reported by the sport's learned commentators as a meteoric rise from nowhere. And, let's be honest, the achievement of the young Frenchman to become the first player since Gustavo Kuerten in 1997 to make a Grand Slam final as his first ATP final is no mean feat.

However, as backers, we need to ignore the hype, strip away the sentiment and learn lessons from occurrences such as these ... and use it to our financial benefit further down the line.

The question isn't necessarily why didn't we all back Tsonga at huge prices to make it to the Melbourne final? Hindsight is a wonderful thing in this respect. The point is how can we spot such a phenomenon before it happens again. That's where the money is to be made.

In the case of Tsonga, and many others, the area for study isn't their early efforts on the main ATP tour (although his defeat of Lleyton Hewitt at Queen's last Summer was a clear sign of the youngster's ability) but before then, on the Challenger Tour.

To many people this level of tennis doesn't even register on the radar. It's too low and insignificant to merit a serious interest. Not so. The winners of tomorrow are the Challenger players of today. The guys YOU will back in the coming years, the ones who will make YOU money are serving their apprenticeships now on this tour. So it is worth taking a few minutes to acquaint yourselves with them.

Go back to 1990 and there were only 70 Challenger events, in 2000 that figure was up to 121 and last year there were over 170 Challenger Tour events in over 40 different countries. Prizemoney ranges from $25,000 to $125,000 and ranking points from these events are used by players as a springboard into the main ATP tour events.

Naturally, greater prizemoney and more ranking points will steer the better players away from these lesser events. However, in this level we do find numerous young hopefuls trying to make a name for themselves plus more experienced players who often drop down into them when recovering from injury, loss of form, if wanting to play in their hometown or when they are knocked out early in a Grand Slam - all sorts of reasons. In short, it's a thriving and ultra-competitive breeding ground of tennis activity.

All the names we're familiar with now, the Federers and Nadals etc, came up through this route and, like Tsonga, there are many more coming along the production line.

Looking back at last year, therefore, it's no surprise that Tsonga had four wins on the Challenger Tour. Also, we see Maximo Gonzalez and Werner Eschauer on that mark.

Those with three wins include more established names such as Michael Russell, Yuri Schukin and Sergio Roitman but do note the young Latvian, Ernests Gulbis.

Dual winners like Marin Cilic, Flavio Cipolla and Simone Bolelli are already in a few notebooks plus the American, Jesse Levine. All won twice last year on the Challenger Tour.

What's more, entering into 2008 as a further mark of the progress on the Challenger Tour we now have the start of the Tretorn Series. These are 22 premier tournaments, unifying them under one main sponsor, Tretorn (manufacturers of tennis balls, among other things)

This will move the Challenger Tour onto a more 'professional' footing. That isn't meant to imply this level of tennis is an amateur pursuit, far from it, but to simply point out that this lower tier of tennis is improving all the while in terms of prestige, prizemoney and quality.

Better events make for better players and, in turn, more likely winners on the main ATP tour. If we can latch onto them now we can then be tipped off about their future success.

As previosuly stated, Noah starting building his Ark before it started to rain, not after. If you get a headstart on the competition then that's often all the edge you need to hoover up the best of the value on Betfair.

Do look to the Challenger Tour events as a way of uncovering future winners. The form of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga last year was a clear precursor to his main tour success and a blueprint for pinpointing the winners of 2008 or 2009 etc.

Betting success often requires a bit of lateral thinking. The winner of 2010's Australian Open might just be playing in Heilbronn this week ...

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