Truths, Lies and Tennis Statistics / Matthew Walton / 28 March 2008 /

"Magical" Matthew Walton tells us why the "decline" of the world's top two players has opened a window of opportunity for us tennis punters

Much has been said and written about the current plight of Roger Federer and, for that matter, Rafael Nadal.

Clearly, both players are struggling at present. One might be in terminal decline, the other may well be awaiting an imminent return to clay. Either way, we shall have to wait and see the outcome and so there seems little point here in adding our views to an already well-covered debate.

So, ignoring the reasons behind this state of affairs, we're turning our attention to the fallout from such a 'failure of the formbook'. Considering what this vacuum of power at the very top of the game means for us backers further down the line.

We've touched on this topic once or twice before. There is a natural cycle of all things in sport, as in life, and no sooner has one force risen to the very top than they steadily plateau and then begin a gentle (or perhaps steep) decline.

Such movement provides enough change within the form, and so the odds, to stop the markets becoming stale. After all, if two players dominate the tennis world - as Federer and Nadal have for the past couple of years - tennis betting can soon lose its appeal. These players get seeded No.1 and No.2 for tournaments, win their respective half of the draw and carve up the titles between them. In short, Federer wins on fast surfaces, Nadal mops up on the clay. Sound familiar?

Whether the emergence of Novak Djokovic has caused their decline or has just coincided with it is open to debate. But what it does show is that all the time new players are emerging to freshen up the scene and keep betting markets full of interest, and therefore full of liquidity.

The danger we face is that players at the top of the seedings fall apart to such a degree that we end up with a general free-for-all amongst the rest of the tour and a formbook which becomes redundant in terms of finding winners. Let's not forget, we want enough variation to allow us (the well-informed) to prosper but not so much that finding winners ends up as little more than a lottery!

This prompted a look at the tour so far in 2008. Up to the current event in Miami, we have seen 19 tournaments take place during the past three months.

We're concentrating on the four leading players in these events - that's the two losing semi-finalists, the losing finalist and the winner. That would give us a maximum possible number of 76 different players from the 19 tournaments (if each event had four different players making up the top four places every time).

If the list did include 76 different players, or close to 76 different players, this would illustrate a highly volatile tour and markets which may be more suited to laying than backing. However, a very low number would suggest that the formbook is reliable and so swing things back in favours of the backers.

The answer is that we have 53 different players filling the top four places of these 19 events - and that's a lot.

Several appear a few times, Djokovic (3), Ginepri (3), Nadal (3) and Stepanek (3) plus Acasuso, Almagro, Ancic, Davydenko, Federer, Ljubicic, Llodra, Monaco, Moya, Murray, Nadal, Nalbandian, Querrey, Roddick and Soderling who all make the list twice.

But that still leaves a whole host of players making the frame in events where previously we had no inkling of their capabilities. Guys like Joseph Sirianni, Kevin Anderson, Sergiy Stakhovsky, Simone Bolelli, Kei Nishikori, Pablo Cuevas, Santiago Ventura and Fabio Fognini ... where did they come from?

Even guys like Julien Benneteau, Nicolas Lapentti, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and Steve Darcis were not what you would class as obvious bets, even though they are better known.

Admittedly this will always happen. We'll always get new blood coming through - causing upsets, reaching semi-finals and finals, challenging the formbook. We just don't want too much of it!

Ultimately, we've yet to see Federer or Nadal win a tournament in 2008. For sure, we've seen some familiar names win events and make it to the latter stages of others. But the fact remains that we've had a pretty tough year thus far when it comes to picking reliable players. Guys who are always there or thereabouts. Very few are using form from one event and then building upon it in subsequent tournaments.

This phenomenon, whether the result of the demise of Messrs. Federer and Nadal or simply a coincidence of timing, highlights our need as backers to move with the times. To embrace this changing of the guard and see it as a necessary shake-up to the status quo. Without it events would be very predictable, very tight in terms of value and very hard to profit from.

Too much volatility is bad. Just enough is what we all should hope for. The test is to move quickly enough to latch onto these new talents (so watch out for Ernests Gulbis, Robin Haase, Andreas Seppi, Janko Tipsarevic and Marcel Granollers-Pujol).

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