Tennis is one of those sports where the draw is an impossible result. The matches will either be over the best of three sets or five sets so in the end, one player wins and the other player loses. There are no sharing of the spoils like there is with sports like football and cricket.
Sports like tennis then create situations where players have to actively go for the win and cannot be content with a draw. Evenly matched players often get themselves into situations where the entire match comes down to a few key moments. Suddenly set points, game points and break points elevate in importance and this can certainly be the case where the serve is dominating.
Then when we look at tie break and final set situations, we can sometimes reveal a clear picture of the inner workings of a certain players mindset. I am going to drift somewhat here by making a comparison with penalty shoot-outs in football. This is a totally unique situation for a footballer and is something that cannot be adequately prepared for in practice.
You simply cannot replicate game conditions, the crowd, the pressure and all the rest of it during a practice session. Suddenly the player is thrust into a situation where the entire match could depend on him doing something what he is expected to do and that is to score a penalty. But I have long argued that certain players are more cut out to handle the psychological demands of a penalty shoot-out than others.
I have seen many players who have visually crumbled prior to taking a penalty and the miss wasn’t down to poor technique but a terrible frame of mind. It is all too easy to want to be the guy who stands tall in these situations and the players who do not want to be seen as “bottlers” will put their name forward even if inside, they are a mental wreck.
So what has this to do with tennis betting or tennis in particular? Well although events like tie breaks and break points and set points are not as rare for tennis players as penalty shoot-outs are for football players, there are still increased pressure levels at these particular points of the match. These pressure levels increase depending on other factors as well. These are how far into the match we are and also how deep into the tournament and the actual importance of the tournament as well.
Quite often pressure is self imposed and psychological in nature. So looking back through past results of tennis players can reveal definite patterns of just who fares well in these situations and when.
We could take a player who has done very well in final set deciders against equally skilled players and has a record of 21-9. Then when we couple that with his tie break record of 19-5 then this appears to be a player who plays very well under pressure! But this can be a terribly misleading picture if these statistics were taken from lower ranking events.
Suddenly when you look at his record in grand slam events then a different picture emerges. A record in final set deciders reads 4-8 and their tie break record is 3-10. You can see the reversal here quite clearly and while this could be down to sample sizes, we could also be seeing the first indication of a player who does badly once the pressure reaches a certain level in a certain given situation. This is where live play betting really comes into its own.
