Does the market value players with a Latino name correctly?

Does the market value players with a Latino name correctly?

By Dan Weston Apr 4, 2014

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With the tennis clay season re-starting after the hard court events in March, this article examines whether the Tennis betting markets over-react towards the nationality and name of players on clay.

If you took a survey of which nations had the strongest players on clay, it’s very likely that the likes of Spain, Italy, Argentina, Portugal and Brazil would be at the top of the list.

Certainly, with two players in the ATP top ten – world number one Rafael Nadal and sixth-ranked David Ferrer – who are very strong on the surface, and 12 players in the top 100, Spain are the most prominent Tennis nation in the world currently on clay, with a strength in depth that other countries can only look at with envy.

Something evident during the clay season is an apparent under-rating of specific players due to their playing style. Both John Isner and Kevin Anderson are competent clay court players, despite having a reputation for being hard-court loving big servers. However, there are several players such as Marcos Baghdatis and Yen-Hsun Lu, who have atrocious records on the surface. Andy Murray is another whose clay stats are much worse than other surfaces, and the recently retired Andy Roddick was another in this regard.

On that basis, it has often been discussed that players from the above nations are priced too short on clay due to their nationality, or more specifically sometimes ‘a Latino name’. The purpose of this article is to assess whether that is indeed the case, and to evaluate whether betting against these players could give generally positive returns.

ATP: Value to be found on the clay court

The following table illustrates the 12 clay month stats (correct at 2nd April, 2014) for the top 100 ATP players from the above nations, and those players’ career clay stats, with a hypothetical 100 bet at level stakes being applied to all their matches. All prices used were Pinnacle Sports’ closing prices.

Click the graph to see the full size

We can immediately see from the table that backing these players actually generated a positive return on investment in the last 12 months, of 5.44%. Furthermore the career return on investment was marginally positive, from a huge sample of 4625 matches.

This would indicate that – opposed to the hypothesis that there would be a negative return backing players with Latino names – there was actually some small edge to backing them on clay.

However, it can be said that Joao Sousa and Carlos Berlocq seem to be over-rated on clay from the stats, with poor 12 month and career stats on the surface.

Federico Delbonis is definitely one to watch. With a win percentage of 69.6%, the Argentine – who recently won his first ATP title in Sao Paulo – looks to have impressive clay court stats. This puts him with a higher win percentage over the last year than the more illustrious and higher-ranked Nicolas Almagro and Fernando Verdasco. He also had excellent financial returns from backing him in both the last 12 months, and throughout his career on clay.

The following table illustrates the 12 clay month stats (correct at 2nd April, 2014) for the top 100 WTA players from the above nations, and those players’ career clay stats, with a hypothetical 100 bet at level stakes being applied to all their matches. All prices used were Pinnacle Sports’ closing prices.

Click the graph to see the full size

WTA: Market efficient

What is immediately apparent from the table is that there were less WTA players from the traditional clay-playing nations in the top 100, and that returns were not as strong as in the ATP.

A return on investment of 1.40% isn’t anything to be particularly sniffed at, but it’s not nearly as impressive as the 5.44% that the ATP generated. A career ROI of -0.25% shows that the market appears pretty efficient at pricing up the above women, and that name and nationality have little impact in the market.

Interestingly, Roberta Vinci and Paula Ormaechea (from a smaller sample) have strong returns on clay, and Vinci’s 12 month win percentage of 76.2% is highly impressive for a player ranked 16th in the world. With the Italian having a testing start – on hard court – to the 2014 season it will be a big ask for her to maintain this percentage this year.

It would certainly appear that Garbine Muguruza has been very over-rated so far on clay in her short career, with terrible returns in the last 12 months, as well as throughout her career. Maria-Teresa Torro-Flor is another one that accusation can be levelled at.

Overall the statistics indicate that particularly in the WTA, the market is very efficient regarding players’ names and nationalities on clay. On that basis it can be said that matches on clay can be assessed on the merits of each individual player, as opposed to the market being skewed based on a players’ nationality or ‘latino name’.

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 atwww.tennisratings.co.uk.

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