Do favourites thrive at the business end of Grand Slam Tournaments?

Do favourites thrive at the business end of Grand Slam Tournaments?

By Dan Weston Jan 17, 2014

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With the Australian Open in full swing and the second week approaching, we have assessed the record of favourites in the latter stages of Grand Slams, with a view to see if there is a potential betting edge.

Previous articles have mentioned the accumulated fatigue that it is vital for ATP players to avoid in the five-set format, and it is also my belief that one of the main areas where top players thrive over their lower-ranked competition is their superior level of fitness.  This is even more pertinent in the current Australian Open, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees due to a general heat wave across Southern Australia..

Therefore, logic should dictate that the ‘better’ player – the market favourite – will have a strong record in the latter stages of Grand Slams.  For clarity, we considered this to be the 4th round – round of 16 – or later in the events, and the sample we used was all Grand Slams between 2010-2013.  All prices used were Pinnacle Sports’ closing prices.

However, would the market take this into account enough, or even too much? We decided to find out…

Between 2010 and 2013 there were 16 Grand Slam events and each event had 15 matches from the round of 16 onwards, so a possible sample of 240 matches was obtained.  This was reduced by three matches – two were walkovers (Fognini vs Djokovic in the French Open in 2011, and Fish vs Federer in the US Open in 2012) and in the French Open in 2010, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Mikhail Youzhny were equal favourites at 1.98, so this match was discounted.

Event

P/L

Matches

ROI%

Australian Open

543

60

9.05

French Open

589

58

10.16

Wimbledon

207

60

3.45

US Open

123

59

2.08

Overall

1462

237

6.17

We can see from the above table that all events showed a positive return backing favourites to a level 100 stake from the 4th round of a Grand Slam onwards – indeed, the first two Grand Slams of the season, the Australian and the French Opens, had stellar returns of over 9%.  Overall, the return was 6.17% across all events from 237 matches – very solid figures indeed.

100 stake backing favourite

Price Range

P/L

Matches

ROI%

<1.20

159

93

1.71

1.20-1.49

748

86

8.7

1.50-1.99

555

60

9.25

1.20-1.99

1303

146

8.92

The second table shows the profit generated from the same sample filtered by price range.

We can see that the returns were low when the favourite’s starting price was below 1.20 – just a 1.71% return on investment.  It’s not entirely a surprise though, because with prices so low there clearly isn’t as much scope for high percentage returns, and also the market is probably fairly efficient in this price range.

However, returns were superb when the favourite was priced over 1.20 – with both separate price ranges returning 8.70% and 9.25% respectively.  Returns of 1303 from 146 matches (8.92%) when the price ranges were combined is a very strong return on investment.

It was also interesting to note that just 41 favourites from the 237 matches lost.  This gave favourites a win rate of 82.7%, which is higher than the win percentage for favourites in any individual tournament in the ATP calendar, so this also supports the fact that favourites dominate these latter stages of Grand Slams.

The final area to assess is looking at the four players featured as favourite more often than others – the four players considered the elite for a number of years – Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal – June 10th 2013 was the last time these four players were all in the top 4 of the ATP rankings.

Player

Favourite Matches

Wins

Win%

P/L

ROI%

Djokovic

48

41

85.42

339

7.06

Federer

34

25

73.53

-420

-12.35

Murray

32

30

93.75

560

17.5

Nadal

40

38

95

644

16.1

This table illustrates the difference between the current top three players in the world, Djokovic, Murray and Nadal, and Federer.

Federer’s results were very poor in all areas.  His win percentage in the latter stages of Grand Slams between 2010 and 2013 was just over 9% below the overall sample average, and he was the only player out of these four players to have a negative return – losing 420 from his 34 matches for a return on investment of -12.35%.  Whilst there is little doubt he is in some decline, these figures show he has been over-rated by the market in 5-set matches for a long time.

Djokovic, Murray and Nadal had an above-average win percentage and very strong returns, particularly Murray and Nadal.  With these three players, as mentioned above, arguably the top three players in the world, it can be seen that these elite players have a huge recent edge in the late stages of Grand Slam events and it would require very strong evidence to want to oppose Djokovic, Murray and Nadal in the latter stages of Grand Slams.

Bettors should consider these angles when betting on the second week of the Australian Open, and consider the 5-set format of men’s Grand Slams make this a totally different betting proposition to normal 3-set ATP events.

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