Motivation or Pressure – does the market correctly assess the impact?

Motivation or Pressure – does the market correctly assess the impact?

By Dan Weston Mar 28, 2014

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Ranking points are an integral part of the Tennis world – with players routinely having to defend ranking points accumulated in the previous year, this article examines whether the tennis betting market accurately takes into account the fact that players are defending ranking points in a given event.

A Tennis player’s ranking is assessed on a 52-week rolling year basis with points being removed and added each week, depending on results.  Many tennis fans and bettors seem to incorrectly assume that ranking points are assigned to a certain event but this is not the case.  A tennis player defends the ranking points they gained on the equivalent week of the previous year, not the actual tournament they were won from.  This is important as there are a few occasions throughout the year that tournaments move date from the previous year, and it would be a fallacy to assume the player was defending points from that tournament.

What would be much more reasonable to assume is that the player and their support team will be more than aware that they are defending ranking points in a given week.  On that basis, it’s fairly logical to think that the player will give their best efforts when defending ranking points, and there could be a further positive with events which dates have stayed static in the calendar, the player has won previous ranking points due to a love of the conditions or event (for example, Andreas Seppi in Eastbourne or Robin Haase in Kitzbuhel – or any event held at altitude).

However, a negative aspect of defending ranking points is that players with less mental strength than others may struggle under the pressure of defending ranking points so it’s definitely not a given that a player will thrive in this circumstance.

Notable drops in ranking

A couple of examples of players’ rankings falling after failing to defend ranking points are:-

In October 2012, Jerzy Janowicz shocked the Tennis world after reaching the final of the Paris Masters 1000 event as a 69th ranked qualifier.  The same event was held the same week in 2013 and Rafael Nadal eliminated him in the round of 16, causing his ranking to drop from 14 to 21.

Filippo Volandri reached the final of the Sao Paulo event in February 2012, losing in three sets to Nicolas Almagro.  The same event was held the same week in 2013 and the Italian – after two underdog wins over Daniel Gimeno-Traver and Thomaz Bellucci – lost as a 1.48 favourite to Martin Alund in the quarter-finals.  The effect of this on his ranking was profound – it dropped from 88 to 113.  Whilst this may sound fairly inconsequential, it would mean that he would now not gain direct entry for many ATP events that he would have done if he had defended his ranking points successfully.

Defending the points

There were 128 finalists in ATP events in 2012 and 32 managed to reach at least the final again (25.0%).  Novak Djokovic (6), David Ferrer (5) and Rafael Nadal (4) led the way in this area.  In fact, when you include Andy Murray (3) and Roger Federer (2), this quintet comprised 20 of the 32 successful players.

The following table illustrates the results of players defending winner or runner-up ranking points in the ATP in 2013.  For clarity, only matches with at least one set completed were sampled, and all prices used were Pinnacle Sports’ closing prices.  A 100 level stake hypothetical bet was applied to all players defending these ranking points in the sample.

<1.20

1.20-1.49

1.50-1.99

2.00-2.99

3.00-5.99

6.00+

Favourite

Underdog

Overall

Matches

128

97

48

25

21

3

273

49

322

Wins

121

76

29

14

4

1

226

19

245

Win %

94.53

78.35

60.42

56.00

19.05

33.33

82.78

38.78

76.09

P/L

235

291

-19

843

-667

361

507

537

1044

ROI

1.84

3.00

-0.40

33.72

-31.76

120.33

1.86

10.96

3.24

We can see from the statistics above that overall there was a small positive return on investment backing players when defending finalist ranking points in their matches a year later.  3.24% is a very solid figure and this shows that the market doesn’t fully take into account the effects of defending ranking points enough.

It’s also worth noting that whilst the 1.84% return on investment for players priced below 1.20 doesn’t appear anything out of the ordinary, this is a very impressive figure for backing players at these short odds, with many matches sampled having players priced under 1.10.

What can also be seen from the table is that underdogs, from a smaller sample, had much better success than favourites, particularly in the 2.00-2.99 odds range.

Whilst it’s too small a sample to draw many conclusions from, it would appear fairly logical that players priced 2.00-2.99 would do well – they are considered to only be slightly worse than their opponent on that given day, and have possibly greater motivation than that opponent.  Furthermore, it is likely they would have less expectation and pressure than if they were favourite.

Assessing whether a player is defending ranking points is something that bettors should consider when betting on a tennis match, and should be part of a balanced betting strategy.

Dan Weston is a freelance tennis writer who, along with producing expert content for Pinnacle Sports, also produces his own tennis rating system, and trading analysis, which can be found at www.tennisratings.co.uk.

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