Ultra Sports Bet

The Australian Open certainly isn’t the most glamorous or interesting Grand Slam, and tennis isn’t my first betting choice at the best of times, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t take a look for value.The draws are out, the future odds are set, and here are the players I have my eye on.

Men

Roger Federer is, obviously, the best choice and the likely winner. The problem, though, is that his odds are at 4/7. No matter how good he is that is just way more of a price than I will take. For the purpose of futures bets I will ignore him, as I will Rafael Nadal, whose recent form scares me far too much to accept his 6/1 price. The only way I see to play this is to pick a couple of guys at decent prices and take a shot.

The first of those is Andy Murray. He’s a risk because he has never been past the fourth round in a slam, but at 20/1 he’s worth a shot. He seems to have his head together after ditching Brad Gilbert in November, and he cruised to a win last week in Qatar. Most importantly, as the ninth seed he won’t have to hit one of the top four players until the quarters at the earliest. He’s 21 now, so he is physically and mentally more mature than ever, and if he is ever going to break through then it should happen soon.

Speaking of the top four players, the other guy I will have a bit of action on is Novak Djokovic. The number three seed has been hyped as the next big thing for a while, and has yet to quite live up to it when it counts, but he is well seeded here for a deep run, and he is a relative bargain at 12/1.

Women

The odds for the top seed, Justine Henin, aren’t as bad as Federer’s at 13/10. She has only competed in two of the last four Australian Opens, but she has made the final twice and won once in the times she has been here. Given here recent dominance and determination, I would be hard pressed to ignore her here.

Given that she is at a low price, the only other thing that there is room to do is put a smaller bet on a couple of players to go with a bigger bet on Henin. There are only two places I want to go, and only because not going with either of them scares me – the Williams sisters. Serena is at 9/1 and Venus is at 12/1. Neither is at their best (or maybe they are, but we would never know because we never see them), but they are so ridiculously talented and scary that either could win at any time.

UPDATE: Andy Murray was not the best pick I have ever made. A good pick would not have got knocked out in the first round.

SECOND UPDATE: The beauty of betting futures is that you don’t have to to particularly well to make a giant profit. I was correct in just one of my five picks, but Djokovic paid off at 12/1, so it was a very good tournament for me. After the way the Serbian played Down Under we’ll never see a price like that again, so I hope everyone enjoyed it while it lasted.

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