Betting on The 2009 Australian Open

January 14th, 2009

Australian Open Tennis bettingHere’s the latest contribution to the BookieLabRat.com blog from popular onlineline sportsbook Bodog Sports: The 2009 Australian Open. 

Bettors all over the world have been waiting for this moment. The first major event of the 2009 tennis season is the Australian Open, starting Jan. 19 at Melbourne Park in Melbourne. The country’s sporting mecca and second largest city will be treated to two weeks of top-flight tennis. And the fields for both the men and women are wide open this year.

WOMENS AUSTRALIAN OPEN BETTING

On the women’s side, defending champion Maria Sharapova is already out of the running; the shoulder injury that took her out of last year’s Olympics and U.S. Open has yet to heal properly. That leaves the two Williams sisters as the leading candidates to win in Melbourne. Serena Williams is the top seed at this week’s warm-up WTA event in Sydney, the Medibank International. Venus Williams is idle this week; she’s never won the Australian Open, while Serena has taken this event three times, most recently in 2007.

The hardcourt at Melbourne Park is a Plexicushion surface (specifically, the Plexicushion Prestige) that made its debut at last year’s event, replacing the old Rebound Ace surface that was criticized for overheating and causing ankle injuries. The slower Plexicushion surface (slow for a hardcourt, that is) doesn’t help Serena exploit her strong volleys; Sharapova, a more classic baseline player who is still developing in other aspects of the game, won her first Aussie Open last year.

The surface change might make Venus the better bet this time around compared to her sister. She’s only been to the finals at Melbourne once back in 2003 and was eliminated in the quarterfinals last year by Ana Ivanovic. But the elder Williams got the better of world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic 6-2, 6-2 at last week’s World Team Challenge event in Hong Kong. Serena, meanwhile, struggled to beat world No. 46 and Australian native Samantha Stosur in three sets during the first round of the Sydney warm-up. It was Jankovic who eliminated Serena at the Aussie Open quarterfinals last year.

That roadblock might not be there this month. Jankovic pulled out of the Hong Kong event after losing to Venus, citing the flu. “I really have been trying my best to go on the court, but I feel slow,” Jankovic told the BBC on Saturday. “Nobody likes to be sick, and now I’m on medication and I have to rest and try to recover as fast as possible.”

MENS AUSTRALIAN OPEN BETTING

The men’s draw could be less competitive than expected, as well. Marat Safin pulled out of the Kooyong Classic eight-man exhibition on Monday with what he’s calling a shoulder injury. Safin is the 2005 Aussie Open champion and enjoyed something of a revival in 2008 by reaching the semifinals at Wimbledon, normally his weakest Grand Slam.

If Safin is out of the picture, that opens the field up somewhat for Andy Murray, the 21-year-old Scotsman who wowed the tennis world by beating both Roger Federer and Andy Roddick to win the Qatar Open. Murray also beat both players to close out 2008 with a victory at the Tennis Masters Cup in China. Both events were played on the hardcourt.

The United Kingdom is a haven for betting on tennis, and Murray has been the uncrowned champion of punters since he cracked the ATP’s Top 10 last summer. Murray is currently the No. 4 player in the world and expected to ride a wave of British money into the favorite spot for Melbourne.

Federer (No. 2 in the world) and Rafael Nadal (No. 1) figure to be crowding Murray at the top of the Aussie Open odds list. Nadal is still noted as a clay-court specialist, although he did win his first Wimbledon last year. But Nadal has never been to the finals at either the Aussie or the U.S. Open – also a hardcourt event – while Federer won at Melbourne in 2004, 2006 and 2007. For good measure, Murray beat Nadal in the U.S. Open semis last year after losing his first five encounters with the Spaniard.

Available right now are the Aussie Open warm-up events in both men’s tennis betting and women’s tennis betting; single-game matchups will also be available for the Open itself, but the tennis futures market is a very simple and popular way to wager on the Open, especially with the time zone difference Down Under. The futures format is common to tennis, golf and NASCAR, the holy trinity of summertime betting. And it is summer in Australia right now, after all.

Compare Australian Open Odds across the top online sportsbooks

 

Use the following links to BookieLabRat.com to check out the latest LIVE sportsbook prices on the Australian Open (which bookie has the best odds?)

 

>>Mens Australian Open Betting Odds Compared
>>Best Womens Australian Open Betting Prices

Entry Filed under: General Banter,Sports Betting,Sports News & Results

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