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Wimbledon 2008 roundup!

Having just been treated by Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer to one of the most emotional and entertaining finals we're ever likely to see, I thought it might be a suitable time to give a punt.com round up of opinion (maybe some aftertiming too) from this year's Wimbledon.

Todays match was quite simply emotionally draining to watch, let alone trade.  I feel sorry there has to be a loser, clearly Roger was gutted at the end, and no doubt many are circling him posing questions about his status in the game.  He's still ranked number one, but Rafa's lead at the top of this years 'race', just got wider, it's a matter of time now till we crown a new World number 1.

I think all year there have been signs that Roger's mental strength under pressure from Nadal and sometimes Dokovic was on the wane.  He's been tightening up when it matters the most.  It's been all about pressure, we've all got our breaking point, even Nadal choked on two match points earlier. 

It's been a slow death by pressure for Roger, he's put up a valiant fight, but he needs a release.  Strangely, I feel losing today will probably help him to loosen the baggage.  How much baggage needs releasing?  I think there's still more to come, perhaps he won't win a grand slam this year, I feel sure he needs to lose (and will) the number one spot, before he can feel free.  We all know the different pressures related to being the front runner, to be on top ready to be shot down for so long shows how great he really is.

Nadal got tight today!  There were nerves everywhere on center court.  He didn't play his best tennis, there were moments where even he wasn't hitting freely, his shots were dropping short, too much spin (when under pressure, go back to what you do best...).  What a great kid though, you could tell he was knotted up at the end, and how much Wimbledon meant to him.  Pure class, both of them and a great champ.

All of this said, it was a match statisticians wouldn't have made sense of.  Nadal two sets up, yet the stats suggested Roger played the better tennis, he was ahead on points, winning more points on serve than Nadal.  The big points are the ones that decide things, and this is where Rafa took a grip.  At one stage I think Roger was 1/8 break points, Rafa, 3/4. 

After the rain break, there was something different in the air however, more penetration on Roger's shots, less so on Rafa's, a genuine feel that the real grass court king had shown up... this, is how to play tennis on the green stuff, suddenly from thinking Roger had little chance, he looked in control (of his nerves more than anything).

My wallet would have been much fatter had Nadal taken this in 3.  Due to the liquidity (a Betfair record volume of £49m was matched on this final!), I was able to comfortably swing a big bat at things without much risk.  I felt ok about the prospect of losing (or winning) bigger due to the large size of trades, I had prepared mentally for it before I began... the plan, simply stick to what I normally do, but with bigger trade sizes. 

I had the memorable position after set one of +£67k Nadal and -£50k Fed!  To describe how I traded would take way to long however, and although this position was worth a lot, I ended up not winning as much by the end, having been chopped around so much, no one in their right mind could have 'picked' a winner in that final set.  The back and forth nature of my trading resulted in a personal record turnover (£1.5m) too, along with the pain of my betting applications & Betfair website screeching to a near halt under the weight of number of trades to keep track of.  The last set was virtually untradeable on the match odds market for me, I had to switch to tournament winner.

If I'm honest I'm still a bit of an emotional wreck after that match, I don't know what to do with myself.  There's always this feeling the week after Wimbledon of aimlessness for me.  I've immersed myself so much in the two weeks, that resurfacing takes some getting used to...what do I normally do on a Monday?  I have no idea.

There's plenty of tournaments this week, but I'm not sure I'll get too involved, there will be some massive downsizing of trades to get used to again.

So what of the rest of the tournament...  Personally I had a great one, apart from a silly encounter with the Fed v Ancic match, which I won't go into, suffice to say I layed a vast sum of Fed at shorts looking for a hold or two...cue Ancic broken in the first game.  Easy to get over though, since it's just one market and something a bit out of the ordinary strategy wise.

Well done Venus Williams, beating sister Serena can never be easy, but for her it was an exercise in consistency.  She was the steadier of the two, Serena more aggressive but at times all over the place.  I'm happy for Venus though, she seems a nice girl and gracious in victory and defeat.

Andy Murray had a great performance against Gasquet, but showed the distance he needs to go to beat Nadal.  He's surely not far behind in rankings terms now, but a considerable distance away from competing with him on a tennis court.  Too strong, too fast, too powerful.

Safin was a bit of a turnup for the books, but then he's always a dangerous floater, if he has a week where he doesn't hit 25 shots a match long of the baseline, this is what happens.  Surprising really considering the ball stays low on the grass.

Ivanovic looked a shadow of her French Open self, as if some imposter had been on court for the last 12 months, this was the 2006 version of Ana Ivanovic, shots hit hard for the sake of hard, sometimes a gentle reminder about a net and some white lines is a good idea.

Zheng Jie and Tamarine Tanasugarn did great representing the smaller girls!  Two, smaller, feminine versions of Pong the computer game.  They demonstrated the success you can have if you make like a wall and get everything back, let the opponent kill themselves off... I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often really, especially with the women.

I'm gonna leave it at that for now, a great championships.  I hope the British press let young Laura Robson get on with things quietly for a while too.  Only 14 and having the weight of a nation's expectations on her shoulders, she has a good 2 years to go before she can even begin to make real strides in the main draw.  Here's hoping she can continue to progress.  I won't know what to do with myself tomorrow, if only Wimbledon was on every week.

January roundup.

Well, I did say once a month didnt I...

The Tennis..

We started the year in Qatar, it's always good to catch as much early action as you can before the Aussie Open, or indeed the rest of the year and there were a few notable points that came out of this one (all my opinions of course).  Firstly, Ivan Ljubicic looked out of sorts, looked slow and inaccurate, based his entire game on his serve - nothing unusual there, just more so than normal. He'll need to sort himself out to stay somewhere near the top of the game..

Andy Murray won the tournament, but more than just playing great tennis, he was also looking considerably leaner and fitter than I've ever seen him.  Clearly putting on some muscle and losing any shred of fat he had last year...  his speed around the court was unbelievable at times.

The Aussie Open was fantastic this year.  Loads of great matches, even on the first day which is usually awash with one sided, boring matches.  Plenty of matches went the distance, it was great trading and surprisingly - good liquidity too during the night, very happy to see that.

Murray will be gutted he went out first round to Tsonga, I'm sure he fancied a very good run after Qatar.  Tsonga was unreal however, we all know that if he hits it inside the lines, he's fairly unstoppable..  huge forehand, big serve.. anyone who watched him go close to beating Roddick in the first round of the Aussie's the year before knew what he could do.  A breath of fresh air.

Fed looked slow and out of sorts, I'm a Fed fan, so I'm hoping it's just a result of his pre tournament illness and not the beginnings of a decline..   

Roddick had a huge match with Kohlschreiber which went deep into the 5th.  Personally I felt he had little game in that match and lent on his serve to get him out of all sorts of trouble..  the match stats suggest a very high quality battle, my opinion is they flattered Roddick hugely, the winners were coming from the German's racquet, Roddick simply far too passive.. no attacking intent from his ground strokes.  Massive improvement needed from him in this area otherwise I see him doing nothing this year.

Nadal looked pretty sharp, not something I was fully expecting given something of a flat finish to last year.  He looks ready to go, but was beating by a man playing out of his brains.

We haven't mentioned the winner yet, Djokovic.  I think a fair winner in the end, his level was above that of Tsonga in the final...  most noteworthy point on the Serb..  backhand down the line!  where has that come from ?! 

On the Womens side, although I dislike Maria, it was good ot see her come back and play perhaps the best she's ever played..  makes this year very interesting, with pressure back on Justine Henin now who was head and shoulders above everyone last year.  Maria's got herself a new set of wheels to get around the court it seems.  Gone is the heavy goods vehicle reverse beep..  impressive change in her movement, credit to her fitness coach, she was getting balls back that previously she had no hope of getting close to.

Wierdest match of the tournament, Serena Williams v Jankovic.  What the hell went on here ?!  Serena was playing some reasonable tennis before this, and Jankovic could barely run with all the injuries she has been accumulating recently.  Williams looked in pieces on court, serving at 75mph, hitting 25 backhands into the net and moved like the Sharapova of old.  She goes a set down, and suddenly, it's 110mph serves and the odd lashed winner...  but alas, the effort was too late, Jankovic fell over the line, almost literally.  I did a packet on this, but I'll live.. and learn.

The trading..

It was a good month.  The first good one for a while actually, I've been treading water for a while, but December's month off gave me a chance to reassess, and to work on everything I've been doing over the previous year.  A lot of experience had been accumulated which needed processing, experience with various ways of approaching things.  December gave me the chance to put a lot of things together into a clear structure.

Really I think the best thing to have come out of this month is the importance of the work I've done away from trading.  The preparation of my strategy, the work I've done on spreadsheets and the maths and continually thinking about and improving these things as I went along, between trading sessions.

As things stand now, I have a spreadsheet telling me what I should be staking and when, and you might think that sounds like something I should have had before..  you'd probably be right !  I certainly know now how much help it is being able to know without thinking all of the numbers that are important to me during a match.  I feel this has helped me massively.

I've said previously how important just acting out a plan is, well now the thought process has been distilled to it's simplest form - seeing numbers and acting on them.  Not just seeing numbers, but being told how much and at what price..  I'm faster than before, and I'm not making the errors of judgement I was.  In fact, "judgement" itself has been removed from the equation and that is the error I made in the Williams match.. a mistake I won't be wanting to make again.  That was my one screw up of the month and my biggest loss.

My biggest win was Djokovic beating Federer.  Incredible value on Djokovic during this match, infact it kept growing bigger and bigger and for a while I thought the market might get away with it, but in reality, there's only so much pretence the market can maintain - if one player is out playing the other then it will go his way eventually.  I remember one instance of laying Fed at 1.8ish with the belief that the right price was 1.7 on Djokovic. 

My big loss took 13.2% off the bank,  the big win added 13.8% on and for the month, it finished up 38%.

If you fancy reading more, Paul at Selectabet has been interviewing me and has recently posted the first part of it on his excellent blog.  Here's to a good Feb.

Update: I notice Part 2 is also up over at selectabet.

The fixed tennis match, that never was.

It's a funny thing, the power of suggestion.  How someone or something can suggest it is one thing, only to be something else entirely.  Multiply this effect when basing judgement upon prior experience.  Now add in to the mix a few hundred people, all thinking or wondering the same thing with all the persuasive and herd like properties that carries, and you have a nice recipe for chaos and pandemonium.

Yesterdays match between Elena Dementieva and Patty Schnyder was one such affair, but crucially, only for those of us participating in the Betfair market.  You see, in the real world, there was nothing about this match that suggested anything strange at all. 

The match was conducted fairly on all real evidence.  It involved the usual amount of closely fought service games, double faults, tension and breaks of serve that you would expect from a match between these two players.  Dementieva running out the winner in straight sets 6-3 6-4.

Yet on Betfair, you could have been forgiven for thinking there was another match going on somewhere else between two players of the same names.  The odds bore no relation to what was really happening, just as they had in the Davydenko v Arguello match, and in another strange match between Mariya Koryttseva and Tatiana Poutchek (the Davydenko match is under investigation).  If you knew what you were looking at, the Betfair market for this match was probably as equally entertaining as the match itself.

Dementieva opened at a very approximate 1.75 - a slight favourite, rightly so, though perhaps not as strong a favourite as she might have been if it wasn't for a lacklustre win against Molik the round previous. 

What proceeded to happen next was a real mystery, and still is.  A procession of money for Schnyder began early in the match, and continued through the entire match pretty much.  Even when Dementieva went a break up in the first set, the extent to which the money had come for Patty meant that Dementieva was now odds against, even though she as ahead!   This was still the case after winning the set 6-3, aparently she was 10% less likely to win the match according to the odds, even though she was 1-0 up!  Very wrong odds indeed.

Bets of £20,000, £30,000 and £40,000 appeared numerous times backing Patty and laying Elena.  It's bets of these sizes which cause chaos in weak 2nd round tennis markets, getting this sort of size of bet matched is not an easy task, and they really did want to get them matched!  Offering odds against on a favourite who is winning, will do that to some degree.  People like myself will feel unable to pass them up, the rest of the people in the market will be scared into believing the money knows something and that it is fixed.   And indeed, in light of  the amount of money yesterday, this is what the majority of ordinary punters believed was happening.

Tennis is a nice sport to bet on, but it's equally attractive to those that like to trade odds back and forth.  (Traders far out number punters in general on Betfair these days.)  Most traders, especially those with lesser experience and knowledge, rely upon the (normally fairly predictable) reactions of others to the scoreline  - tennis' scoring structure  produces a rough mathematical guide to which the prices should follow to some extent, add in market supply and demand and you can come up with ball park guesses of where the price will move to next.

This is good in a perfect World, but we live in a random World, a World where one person can change the entire face of a market and throw out the expectations of a large group of people.  People who are used to reacting to prices, people who had no intention of investing for the long haul, who only have a certain amount of pain they can take from a price not living up to expectations.  Nowhere in the rules does it say someone can't come into a market and do whatever the hell they want, regardless of the level of (none)sense it would appear to involve.  Reactive traders tend to conveniently forget this.

When one person decided they would have a series of very large bets, at what were crazy odds (in the rest of the markets eyes), chaos very quickly descended upon the market place.  The first cry of "Fix" didn't take long to appear on the Betfair forum.  Soon after, those that thought the first large bet must have been a mistake were clambering to get out of their bets on Dementieva for fear of a fixed match. Now it wasn't just the big player that wanted on Schnyder, the numbers of traders fearing the worst was increasing and so was Dementieva's price - rapidly.

During the 2nd set, Schnyder's price to win the match got down to below 1.4 - 72% chance of winning, despite being a set down in the match!  It seemed the fix was inevitable to most, but the match went on totally unaware of what was happening between a few hundred people on the internet.

When Dementieva broke to lead in the 2nd set, it began to dawn that we'd all been watching something that wasn't happening at all.  The bubble quickly broke on the Betfair market and prices quickly snapped towards where they really should have been, Dem winning in the end - not without one or two more moments of market panic.

Questions remain as to what happened.  Who was the mystery punter with serious amounts of money to seemingly throw at players?  Why did they do this?

Dementieva took an injury time out in her previous match v Molik, did someone know something about the injury and it's seriousness?  Did they over estimate the impact it might have?

Is this the same person that bet on the other matches with strange betting patterns and where is all their money coming from?  They surely aren't doing very well this week...  and if you were a match fixer - wouldn't you throw in some bad looking weeks just to make yourself look genuine enough?  Fixers trading amongst themselves?

Few will ever know, but a few things are certain, this match wasn't fixed, and not every match that has strange betting patterns is fixed. 

Given this, what do you with that knowledge?  Yesterday I took on the money and gambled that the match was not fixed.  I took a good bet on Dementieva, everything I look for suggested she was a good bet, and to have such incredible odds on offer, I had to bet an amount I was ok with losing in such a situation. 

I didn't believe either Patty or Elena were players that would be interested in fixing matches, though I don't know them personally - they are two high profile players with great histories in the sport, I would be amazed if they would want to threaten their reputations.

If you are the trader type then, get out and leave alone - particularly if you are thinking 'fix', it will play with your mind and make you do things you never would normally.  Move onto another match.  The most important thing anyone (but particularly traders) can take away from this match is the fact that it only takes one person to change a market.  No one has to conform to any pattern of odds or behaviour in a free market place - plan accordingly and beware of the expected!

Has Radek Stepanek been eating other players' brains?

Has anyone seen Martina Hingis lately ?  Someone should make sure she's ok, perhaps she was affraid her skull will be removed by Sylar... I mean... Radek, hence the split.  He's playing so well at the moment, you have to wonder whether he's stolen her powers, or for that matter, who else's powers he's been stealing lately.  He's playing some amazing tennis, currently 2 sets to 1 up against that other Hero - Novak Djokovic.

PS. If you don't know what I'm on about then you need to start watching Heroes on TV, definitely a Punt.com favourite at the moment.

Tennis lookalikes.

Rain at wimbledon.  It's boring.  So, some tennis lookalikes to pass the time, some are a bit of a stretch, but work with me...

Novak Djokovic & Screech Powers of Saved by the Bell.

Justine Henin & Champion Jockey Tony McCoy.

Roger Federer & Golfer Johan Edfors.

Shahar Peer & Bagpuss.

Ana Ivanovic & Bad Guy "Jaws" from Moonraker.

Nadal wins the French Open.

Rafael Nadal took the French Open, beating Roger Federer in 4 disappointing sets.  Neither player playing at their best, it was Roger that played the worse of the two, clocking up an incredible 60 unforced errors compared to Nadal's 28 - Roger had no chance to win giving his opponent this many points.  A match that was so eagerly anticipated was stunted by player nerves, Nadal conquered his, Roger never did get rid of his fully. 

There were the predictable great points and flashes of brilliance, but these were few and far between.  The market for this was understandibly expecting the flow of unforced errors from Roger to slow, and for a while they did.  In taking the 2nd set, the market looked poised to go all in on Roger, but it wasn't to be and the poor play returned. 

As often is the case, Break Point stats tell a story.  In the first set Roger was unbelievably 0/10 !  Nadal... 2/2.  Roger finished the match 1/17, Nadal 4/10.  16 points which might have changed the course of the match, particularly in the 1st set when Roger was very much on top in the rallies, he should really have been up 2 sets to 0.   

There's little margin for error in the Federer game against a player as quick as Nadal.  Nadal's strokes on the other hand allow for so much top spin that he rarely has to push hard to win the points.  In the patchy periods of solid play, Roger looked to have the better of him.. His backhand down the line controlling the points and setting the tempo, just like it had in Hamberg.  Unfortunately today was all about Roger and his gremlins...  ahead on winners (18 - 13) as well as unforced errors.  He wants it too much for his own good.

French Open Quarter Finals

The French Open Quarter finals begin today with some mouthwatering clashes, including the eagerly anticipated match between Serena Williams and Justine Henin.  This is a replay of the 2003 semi final in which the French Open crowd gave Williams perhaps their harshest treatment in recent years - they love a good booing...  this is of course when they can be bothered to turn up to watch their Grand Slam - empty seats a-plenty at Roland Garros for the early matches, it seems a case of Food over French Open..

Ana Ivanovic is up first (in the empty stadium) against Svetlana Kuznetsova.  Ivanovic is on something of a roll at the moment.  It appears a lot of the shots she normally hits long of the baseline are somehow dropping in, and that's dangerous - cos she hit's that ball rather hard.  2.76 is her price for this match, might turn out to be value.  No bet yet though, she's inexperienced at this stage of Grand Slams, Kuznetsova isn't, and can I honestly bring myself to trust Anna?  Not sure I can..there's 20 unforced errors in a row in her somewhere.

Jelena Jankovic takes on Nicole Vaidisova.  1.37 on JJ at time of writing, I think this is a bet - I'm not on yet though - it's unlikely to be televised here and I don't like going in heavy on these.  Vaidisova may, in time, have the game to win this match, but her mentality sucks.  Anxious looks to her coach everytime she misses a shot - even 2 minutes into the match sometimes.  She may have game, but she ain't got brain.

Anna Chakvetadze takes on Maria Sharapova.  Somehow I've missed every single one of Anna's matches to this point.  She's a good player, lots of variety, and I'm convinced someone will eventually see off Sharapova (please!!!).  Maria's been anything but impressive so far, unless you count her ability to wail like a banshee (volume in proportion to importance of point), which she seems to have taken to an entirely new and unwelcome pitch this tournament.  I felt sorry for her last round opponent Patty Schnyder who's like a door mouse in comparison, she really did crawl into her shell (or hole in the wall) under a barrage of screams, shreeks, shrills and wails... anyone outside the court may have thought someone was getting stabbed in there. 

Quote of the week might well be the rather obscure "It’s tough playing tennis and being Mother Teresa at the same time", wailed after the match by Maria, clearly she lives in some sort of strange abstract fantasy World.  Patty did have match points against Queen wailer, so hopefully Chak can finish the job off today.  2.9 is the price for Chak, looks a cracking bet given Maria's serve isn't screaming on full lungs.

Serena Williams and Justine Henin.  As John Lloyd has been overly pleased to pronounce all week - this is for many people the finals.  Jelena Jankovic would like to disagree with you John.. but it is a bloody good match... there may well be blood left on the court after this one.  Justine begins 1.6 favourite at time of writing.  Personally I would be surprised if Serena can win this one today, but then she always does come up with the surprises.  It's tough to quantify Serena's chances here, she is the ultimate competitor in Women's tennis, yes she has incredible talent, but her will to win makes up a large amount of her game - from this comes her movement etc.  It's a slower surface, she'll need to be timing it well to get it past Justine...  it's going to be fascinating.  Hope it lives up to John Lloyd's hype, he's rarely right on anything.

Roger Federer takes on Tommy Robredo.  Bye Tommy.  And two walls face off later on - Davydenko and Canas.  Davydenko's wall is made of silicon and various other metals - he's cold, he's robotic.  The other wall, Canas, is like a more muscley version of pong, but shaped like a bull.  They may well be playing until Thursday afternoon these two.  Good luck if you are trading today.

Wet start to French Open.

I hate rain at tennis tournaments.  Luckily though, I had the family round this morning so I wouldn't have been able to trade anyway... So it was most welcome earlier on.  Grand Slam tournaments are always cause for excitement and expectation in these parts.  2 weeks of unlimited trading and punting opportunities, with lots of liquidity in the markets and plenty of new tennis punters fancying their chances.

This years French is going to be all about setting up another Fed / Nadal final, it's the match everyone wants to see.  In the women's there's interest to see if Serena can continue a run at the Grand Slam, she's by no means a favourite and a slow start in her first match today might suggest she will struggle.  It offered up my first trade of the tournament however, with a back of Serena as the market paniced with her a set down.  Thankfully she got into gear and took the next two easily enough.

I'm not a big outright winner fan.  I rarely bet on people to win the tournament, I prefer to stick to the matches.  Though I've had some small nibbles at Jelena Jankovic to win at 7/1 roughly.  She won Rome very convincingly beating Kuznetsova in the final, only allowing her to hold serve twice if I remember rightly.  Question marks remain over her ability to close out big matches, but she may just be ready for that challenge this year.

In the men's tournament it's near impossible to see past the big two.  I've had tiny bites into Hewitt at 100/1 roughly and Soderling was too big at 999/1.  Not that I think either of them can get past Rafa or Roger.

Tomorrow's forecast is more rain and extreme wind, great.  The courts looked incredibly slow today, that makes it harder to finish off opponents, so we might see a few comebacks.  Then again, I've seen very little play today so I'm going to reserve proper judgement.  Good luck.

Andy Roddick and Men's Fitness, photoshop shocker.

For a while now I've felt Roddick was looking trimmer on court.  I can't remember where it was when I first noticed it, but in my opinion he's looked leaner than he has for a while.  ...But not quite this lean!  Just how small does his head look compared to his chest and arms ?!  'Andy... suck your stomach right in.. and tilt your head back a bit, we'll edit out the double chin and enlarge the rest...'  You can find the full article here.

Roger Federer's worries.

I'm worried about Roger.  I think he's showing the first signs of losing his mental game.  He'll need to get this right quickly, before the brain rot he's suffering from takes too much of a hold - See Mr. Coria for an example of that.  I'm not saying Roger will suddenly disappear, but it's sad to see Roger suffering like this.

Mistimed shots.  Lost Sets and Lost Matches.  Dropped Service games and opponents that now see him as "beatable".  Roger is worried about them all.  I'm not a mind reader, but his body language really does tell a story this week.  I don't think I've ever seen so much emotion from Roger.  During yesterday's match with Carlos Moya, we had slumped shoulders, cries and shouts of anguish, fist pumping and even a smile!  In the past we were lucky to get a half mumbled "come on".

There's a battle taking place in his head.  He's trying to forget his worries and play whilst putting them to the back of his mind.  The problem is, he's tense.  These mistimed shots bring all the worries to the front of his mind.  One bad shot is taking Roger 15+ good shots to put right, such is the dent to his confidence.  Hit 2 in a row and you can almost give the game away.  I imagine it to be a bit like trying to hold a float under water, eventually it slips out of your grasp and pops up to the surface again.  He'll need to fill it with water to sink the problems completely.

For a gambler, the important point here is that he's become unpredictable.  There's 2 or 3 different Roger Federer's showing up in each match.  His match against Monaco for example, loses the 2nd set amidst a barrage of unforced errors, somehow holds on in the early part of the 3rd, then from nowhere finishes it off very quickly when in sight of the finish line.  His next match v Ferrero was the old Federer, incredible tennis, Juan-Carlos had next to no chance of ever winning that match.  His quarter and semi final matches v Ferrer and Moya were similar stories - a mixture of great shots and awful shots, with no way knowing what's coming next.

He's a dangerous guy to bet on.  His match stats rarely match up to what his odds suggest they should be at the end of the match.  His prices are short, but there's a factor that might well make the prices right.  And that is, do his opponents believe they can beat "Roger Federer"?  His name still carries influence over the other players.  Not only do they need to perform, but they need to think they can win.  I'm not sure they do.  Yet.

One player that doesn't suffer with that is Rafa Nadal.  They meet again today in the final.  Most readers will know my dislike for giving out tips, so please don't see this as one...but...  1.38 on Nadal looks a gift.  Cue Roger playing the match of his life, no unforced errors / ridiculous drop shots from 25ft behaind the baseline etc.  Good luck today, at the time of writing, I have not had a bet on the match.