US Open Betting / Sean Calvert / 05 August 2010 /

As punters we should be very aware of head-to-head records between different players before taking sides. Sean Calvert looks at some of the more one-sided contests in men's tennis.

With the US Open a matter of weeks away, it's time to start thinking ahead about potential Flushing Meadows match-ups and those all important head-to-head records.

Most tennis fans and punters are all too well aware of the famous head-to-heads, such as Rafa Nadal's 13-7 advantage over Roger Federer, but what are the most one-sided and unusual head-to-head records in men's tennis?

A clash of styles is obviously a key component, but mental attitude plays a big part as well amongst the mentally weaker players and top ten stars alike.

For example, current world number six Nikolay Davydenko has an interesting head-to-head record that I think reveals more about his mental attitude against certain players than weaknesses in his game.

You would expect Davy's counter punching game to suffer against the biggest hitters in the game on occasion and that is the case against Andy Roddick (6-1 to Roddick), James Blake (7-0 to Blake), and Marin Cilic (3-0 to Cilic).

However, his results against other heavy hitters tells a markedly different story with an 8-1 advantage over Tomas Berdych, 7-1 over Fernando Verdasco and 6-0 over Fernando Gonzalez. He also oddly has a 5-4 lead over Rafa Nadal.

The fact that Blake has even beaten Davy on clay suggests to me that a few losses against certain players can really affect the Russian in a negative way. Davy's overall match record on clay is 166 wins and 91 losses with nine titles, while Blake's is 45-48 and no titles.

It should have been no contest, but the head-to-head record played its part on that occasion and on the 12 consecutive times the Russian lost to Roger Federer before finally breaking the spell last year.

Speaking of Federer, you perhaps won't be surprised to learn that only Nadal and Murray (6-5) still have leads over the Swiss and he has dished out some almighty hammerings in recent years, so don't look to any of the following to cause an upset over Fed in New York.

Fernando Gonzalez has lost 12 of their 13 matches, while Roddick holds the unwanted record of most beatings by the same player with his 19-2 (tour level) Federer deficit.

Davydenko's 13-2 and fellow Russian Mikhail Youzhny's 10-0 are also worth a mention, while Blake has suffered nine times from their 10 completed matches and David Ferrer has lost all 11 of their meetings.

Also in that category is Robin Soderling, who finally beat his Federer hoodoo at Roland Garros, but the Swede has lost 12 of his 13 tour level matches to the Swiss and therefore has never beaten him on hard in a tour level match.

Federer's own nemesis Rafa Nadal will perhaps be hoping that he meets Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu in one of the early rounds in New York,as he has a handy 10-0 winning mark over the former French Open junior champion.

The punishment could get worse for Mathieu if history is anything to go by and he can take some solace in tennis's most one-sided match-ups and these are good players we're talking about here.

The sadly departed Vitus Gerulaitis was a former world number three and Grand Slam champion (if you can count beating John Lloyd as a credible Slam victory), yet he was beaten 16 times in a row by Bjorn Borg, while Murray's former coach Brad Gilbert suffered just as badly at the hands of Ivan Lendl.

The Czech and now naturalised American, who is about to make hiscomeback on the Champions Tour would probably love to play Gilbert who won only four of the 38 sets they played together in a 16-0 hammering. And Brad is a former world number four!

Back to the present and Nadal would have mixed feelings about playing David Ferrer at Flushing Meadows. His 11-3 lead makes him firm favourite, but one of Ferrer's three came in New York in 2007.

Many people, when asked about their favourite match of recent years, point to Nadal v Verdasco in the Australian Open semis in 2009 and they wouldn't be far wrong, but that was just one of Rafa's 11-0 sequence against his fellow countryman.

And that Aussie Open clash is one of only two of their 11 matches in which Verdy has taken a set from the world number one.

At least Verdasco has a little way to go before he usurps Gerulaitis and Gilbert, but he won't relish a meeting with Nadal when the draw is made for the US Open.

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