Trading Talk – The Championships,Wimbledon

Hot on the heels of the AEGON Queen’s Club Championships, the grass court season’s blue riband event begins on Monday. Spread bettors can look to results from Queen’s for clues to choosing their Wimbledon winners; a glance at the names to have completed the double reveals an illustrious list including John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg, Michael Stich, Pete Sampras, Lleyton Hewitt and, most recently, Rafael Nadal. A total of 14 players have won at both Queen’s and Wimbledon in the same year. So, the many spread buyers of Andy Murray’s outright index will hope he can emulate the achievements of current world number one Nadal, who won his first-ever grass court title at the Wimbledon warm-up last year before crossing London to win lawn tennis’ Holy Grail.

Buyers of Murray’s outright spread may also look to Nadal’s dodgy knees as a hint to the Scot’s chances of being the first British winner since Fred Perry in 1936. However, sellers of either Murray or Nadal’s spreads might be cautious of Roger Federer’s return to form and his recent maiden French Open victory. Sporting Index’s tennis traders are of course fully aware that the elite normally prevail in SW19 – only one wildcard has ever won the men’s championship, famously Goran Ivaniševi? in 2001. But tennis spread bettors looking to sell any of the top four in favour of perhaps Argentine Juan-Martin Del Potro or American Andy Roddick, ranked 5th and 6th respectively, may be disheartened to learn that no man from outside Europe has won since the Australian Hewitt in 2002.

It’s a similar story in the women’s game. Buyers and sellers of the top-20 seeded females’ spreads on the outright index markets will be keen to know that the trophy has never been lifted by a non-seed, and none lower than Venus Williams who was seeded twenty-third in 2007.

Buyers of the Williams Sisters’ spreads will have already concluded it’s hard to look beyond the duo. The sisters have reigned supreme through the noughties, with the Williams name not etched on the famous trophy on just two occasions: 2004 after Maria Sharapova’s victory and with Amélie Mauresmo’s triumph in 2006. Buyers of Serena’s outright spread will be willing her to out-perform her older sibling and take her total title count to three, with a first triumph since back-to-back wins over big sis in 2002 and 2003. Spread punters weighing up the Sharapova challenge will see that in the modern era Steffi Graf is the only European to have won multiple All England Club titles where, unlike the men’s competition, Americans have dominated in recent years.

With an exciting array of tennis spread markets on offer for each individual match, the men’s final itself will undoubtedly receive most interest from spread bettors. There was carnage on the Sporting Index trading room floor during last year’s seven hour epic between Nadal and Federer, with the 62-game duel the longest in the illustrious Grand Slam’s history. <a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href="http://www.sportingindex.com/spread-betting/tennis/wta-tournaments/">Tennis Spread betting</a> was never more interesting to the spread punters who are looking to buy total games in the match will certainly hope for a repeat, and should take note of a ten-year average of the final lasting 41.5 games.