Andy Murray entered the Australian Open vying for favouritism with Roger Federer in a move which surprised many, but not those of us who have been tracking the progress of the fiery young Scot since last year’s Wimbledon.
Then, a heavy defeat to Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals seemed to have vindicated all the nay-sayers who doubted whether Murray had the raw talent to ever win a Grand Slam. Since last summer, however, Murray’s form has been outstanding, with an appearance in the US Open final and a string of successive victories against his main rivals Nadal, Federer and Novak Djokovic.
Over this period, Murray has clearly riled a few feathers in the men’s dressing room, with first Federer and then Djokovic publicly questioning what right a player ranked fourth in the world and yet to win a Grand Slam had to consider himself the outright favourite. Still, it is hard to argue against form and there is little doubt that, going into the Aussie Open, Murray was the form player in men’s tennis.
THE MATCH
Murray’s second round opponent was Marcel Granollers – an up-and-coming Spanish baseliner with whom Murray was familiar from his junior days in Barcelona. Entering the match as a 1/100 favourite with many fixed-odds firms, there was little value in backing Murray to win, or even a 3-0 whitewash at a best price of 2/9.
It is on these occasions that the spread betting firms really come into their own, offering markets such as ‘total games played’ and ‘game supremacy’ (i.e. how many games, aggregated, one player will beat another by).
Fancying Murray to thoroughly outclass Granollers – who, while a promising young player, is not and will likely never be in Murray’s class – I made an aggressive move and SOLD CROSS-COURTS AT 58 with one spread betting company.
This market is formed by multiplying each player's number of games won in a set and adding them all together – for example a match ending 6-4 7-5 would make up 24 (6x4) + 35 (7x5) = 59. When it comes to best-of-five sets matches, sellers live in fear of a high makeup - in theory, over 200 points is possible, which could make things very ugly for the brave seller.
This time, there was no need to worry. Murray, while never at his brilliant best, had far too much for Granollers and ran out a comfortable winner, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2. It was a routine win for Murray, will little of note occurring and unlikely to feature any nostalgic retrospective of the 2009 Australian Open in a few years time. However, this is just the sort of easy win that cross-court sellers live for: a solid, 10 point winner and any potential five-set bullet dodged.
JW
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