Bartoli Bonkers
I fancied the Stephens vs Bartoli match above others yesterday because it looked much more competitive. It turned out to be a very interesting match.
Bartoli was soundly disliked for pushing for a rain break when the crowd wanted more action, but the break didn’t do much to diminish her spirit and she closed out the match. In fact it looked like a bit of gamesmanship from Bartoli. She demanded to stop play at 4-5 to her and 40-40 on Stephens serve. That aside, it was a most interesting match for one standout reason, the number of breaks of serve.
In the women’s game you tend to get more breaks as the serve isn’t so dominant. But in the first set we went 9 games with server then Bartoli broke in the 10th game to take the set. The second set was a whole different kettle of fish though and after a service hold Bartoli’s odds came into 1.22 for the match. Bartoli then broke to see her odds drop to 1.13 and there followed eight breaks of serve.
The extraordinary thing about this is that if you assume the chance of a break is 30%, then this sequence was a one in 15,000 chance. If you had the foresight to oppose each player at the start of this sequence then you would have returned 106% of your trading stake. Having the foresight to predict that however, would have been equally remarkable!
Category: Tennis
