Developing good habits...................
Jul 10, 2021
I have previewed seven games/matches for subscribers today, one tennis and the rest covering football (Brazil, Japan , Copa America), the notes on the Wimbledon Women's final are reproduced below, I want to share them as I feel they are the most interesting/educational written today and regardless of result will repay reading and thinking about.
First up it is never really about finding "winners", results should and always do eventually take care of themselves and it is only ever about looking for good value selections , learning from mistakes and developing good habits.
By making good decisions we can win without looking for winners, but we won't win without good decision making !
Barty is favourite today, I have no argument with that and if my life depended on picking the winner today, it would have to be her I would pick , as her chance is greater than 50%, but thankfully that is not the case and if I choose to bet, all I am risking is money ! She is priced as a 70% favourite, to my mind that is too short, it is not an exact science, it is opinion , but I am a veteran oddsmaker and better at it than most and almost certainly anyone working for a bookmaker, or staking the money which has moved the line prior to game day, sorry if that sounds conceited, regardless of which, it is true ! So if I bet something @ 2.50 I think that the chance of that team/player winning is greater than 40% (2.50), if I think that difference is marginal, I will bet small (or not at all), the bigger the difference the more I want to bet, it is that simple. If I felt the true odds were 45%-47% I would be happy to bet big(ish) and expect to win long term with that example, but on any given day, even @ 47%, there is a greater chance I will lose. However, that is where we started and that should not concern us ! Basically, if we feel we are getting value for money, we should never be afraid to lose ! That is what your bankroll is for , we have discussed much of this before, but it is always worth revisiting.
Today's preview contains notes on Naomi Osaka from 2018 (the link is her coach at the time is now working with Karolina Pliskova), I had been championing Osaka for a long time prior to that, BTW, it seems obvious that she would be a major contender now, less so in early 2016. Sasha Bajin encouraged Osaka to see beyond tennis and not be so one dimensional in her approach to life, but also to work harder in the time she was dedicating to the sport and that is highlighted below in blue type. I picked up on some of that on social media, I do not use it that much and we could debate all day, the benefits or ills of it, but it can be useful as a tool to see who is working harder than before, has arrived at a golf /tennis event early to put in the hard hours instead of heading home for a few days, or to the beach. A break can be beneficial too, but during the season, you are not going to find improvement lying on a sunbed . For example, two players are eliminated early from Roland Garros, two days later one posts photos of themselves chilling with friends in Dubai, the other practicing on some "green stuff" , who is likely to be better prepared for the switch to grass court tennis ?
Anyway, Naomi Osaka upped her training, improved her game and within nine months had won her first two slams !
Pliskova is a similar time span into working with Bajin and in her second ever slam final, after not making it beyond R4 in her last eight attempts, this is why the German coach was employed and why he took the job, not to get Pliskova her #1 ranking back, I doubt she wants that (see below), but to give her the best possible chance to win a slam, hopefully a couple.
That explains the reasoning behind a couple of previews and the original one on Osaka probably earned us 20-25 units of profit and it is rarely just about the day in question.
Good luck !
Wimbledon : WTA final: Karolina Pliskova- Ashleigh Barty
I wrote a few words about both semi finals on Thursday, firstly opposing Ash Barty against Angelique Kerber...............
Kerber leads the h2h 3-2, all played on hard courts.
Barty is world #1 , but is in only her third slam semi final (1-1) with the sole win coming at Roland Garros.
She is 52-15 on grass, but within that 4-7 against top 20 ranked opposition , this is her first time beyond R4 at Wimbledon and she has only ever faced four top 30 ranked players here (1-3) and to reach this stage has met those ranked 138-89-64-17-75 and none have a grass "reputation".
Kerber is 83-29 on grass, 36-11 at Wimbledon where she is a former champion and having won Bad Homburg in build up, she is looking for an 11th straight win on the surface in little more than two weeks, three came against top 25 ranked opponents, one of whom is a two time Wimbledon champion and the other two are seen as likely to challenge in the future. This is her 8th slam SF (4-3) and 4th at Wimbledon (2-1) winning the last two for the loss of only 14 games total.Add in that the German superstar is a leftie and that is always more of an advantage on grass IMO and she has to be the call today. Kerber is the more experienced, especially in slams and on this surface and, Barty has never really beaten anyone of note at Wimbledon, that is not entirely her fault, but today feels like a massive step up, maybe she can do it, but we don't know that yet and her odds are simply too low.
Barty won 6-3 7-6 but it was close , Kerber served for the second set and multiple times had a two point advantage on the Aussies' serve and created more breakpoints. I don't want to take anything away from Barty, she is an intelligent and talented player, but should never have been sub 1.40 in that match up, or against any top 20 type player who is comfortable on grass, whether that description applies to Karolina Pliskova, the jury is still out, but let's continue !
The Czech player turned a profit on the day for us by landing similar odds and overcoming the loss of the first set to Aryna Sabalenka, to win 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 ..............
Aryna Sabalenka blew Ons Jabeur off court on Tuesday in an impressive performance and her first serve was massive, actually so was her second (!) as fast as the Tunisians first serve. But I would give a word of caution, in that it felt like Jabeur was a no show and also was not really enjoying herself as usual and I expect Pliskova to put up more opposition today. This is Sabalenka's first slam semi final and she had not even made a quarter final before this week despite her high ranking and possibly now, having had two days to think about this, it is her turn to feel the nerves.
On Monday I wrote ..........Pliskova has fallen out of the top ten for the first time since August 2016 and she has struggled in the last year against any top 100 opponent on fast surfaces , upon which we should expect her to thrive and to be honest, we have never seen the best of her at the business end of Wimbledon. Pliskova was one of those players, Kerber was another, who never enjoyed the #1 ranking and who knows, might do better here now that she is out of the top 10 and to some degree the pressure is off.
Pliskova is in her 4th slam SF, so has an edge in experience there, but has never really turned up at Wimbledon and made her first quarter and semi final too this week. She has not beaten much at these championships, but has yet to drop a set and has lost an average of just 2.8 games in each, being broken just 3 times, to give that some context, big serving Sabalenka has had her serve broken 11 times. Sabalenka's serve is a massive weapon and fastest of the two, but not by much and I am not sure it is a better serve than Pliskova , it is small margins which will decide this and despite Aryna being the better mover, I see a lot of points decided by first shots, first or especially second serve , or return of serve.
The two have met twice before, both went the distance and were super close, one was on grass at Eastbourne and they won 100 points each that day, this could play out similarly ......
I might be biased, but felt that Pliskova was quite a comfortable winner, she could easily have won the opening set and once she went a break up early in the second it appeared only to be going one way. KP served really well and her second serve was decisive and she allowed Sabalenka just one break point, creating 10 herself.
Barty leads the h2h 5-2, but the only recent meeting was on clay this year and went the distance, there were two grass court meetings which they split, but they were a very long time ago, so not too much to be gleaned from those seven matches beyond the fact that all were lengthy, averaging just shy of 27 games.
Pliskova has been working with coach Sascha Bajin for about eight months and I really like that she spoke out a couple of months ago to say that her poor form at the time had nothing to do with the German, or the work they were doing together, which she believed in and the results are there for all to see this last fortnight. Bajin is used to working with winners, Serena, Wozniaki and Osaka and he was instrumental in helping Naomi Osaka become a champion and after they parted company, I did say that I felt it was a mistake. He improved Osaka in many ways and not all directly tennis related and I wrote the following in early 2018........
The still only 20 yo was imperious in winning Indian Wells, then beat her idol Serena in Miami and we have not seen much of her since and that is a good thing IMO. She went home (Fort Lauderdale), then to Japan to play Fed Cup tennis and hang out and, one of her team, coach Sascha Bajin (worked with Serena and Wozniacki) forced her to relax and push herself, doing a lot of physical non tennis things she had not tried before. She turned up in Madrid, lost in the first round and then came here and played former world #1 Victoria Azarenka in R1 winning 6-0 6-3 ! Azarenka is nowhere near her best again yet and was never really in love with clay even at her peak, but it was still a great win and I saw a couple of things there and more on social media which got me very excited !
In Round 1 I noticed that the team around Osaka had grown and is pretty big now, that can be a bad thing, for the youngster and she is a very young 20yo, I think it is what is needed and they have clearly all been working hard. Just by looking at her, you can see that she is MUCH fitter and her movement around the court greatly improved, her serve has always been huge and she is getting even more out of it now and her average was around 190km (200 would get you into top 20 fastest of all time !) and to be honest she was not really trying for pure speed, her second serve looked improved and everything looked like it had been retweaked and upgraded and, since Indian Wells. Then I saw a couple of things on social media, Naomi working out a lot, including skipping and doing rope work right on arrival at reception at Foro Italico more than a week ago, when others were signing in/on phones etc and she didn't want to waste a moment and when things click for someone as talented as Osaka and then she ups her work load and gets benefits from it, then everyone needs to take note.
Within nine months she had won her first two slams !
Bajin doesn't have such a clean canvas with Pliskova who, at age 29 is a decade older than Osaka when he started working with her, but I can see improvement in similar areas (second serve) , playing to her strengths and looking for any kind of improvement in weak areas, this is a bit like the wildly successful GB Cycling mantra of trying to improve everything, however small or relatively unimportant it might seem, by 1%.Bajin was bought in not to make Pliskova top 5 again per se, but to help her win a slam and now they are just two sets away from that target.
Barty is favourite,which is fine and I have no arguments with that, but there is a world of difference between 1.80 and 1.30 and, for my money, Pliskova's chance is greater than 33% and that is all we/I need to know.
1.75 units Karolina Pliskova to beat Ash Barty 3.07 Pinnacle.
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