Posted:
#1
Number one rule of gambling is leave your emotions at the door. Its taken me a few years to control my emotions when wagering but I now accept my losses just as I accept the wins. I have no favourite players or teams, that just clouds my judgment. That being said there are players/teams that I dislike and refuse to wager on and normally Monfils is one of those players. At the start of this month I went against my better judgment and placed three seperate wagers that involved Monfils, all three were losses. I am comfortable with those decisions and would make the same assessment if they were all to be replayed. Tomorrow win or lose I will be making my last wager involving Monfils and also throwing out my regimented percentage betting and I am going to chase those three losses by betting against Monfils. I honestly thought that Tsonga would be there with Ljubicic and prematurely started to cap the final with Tsonga and I had Ljubicic winning. The players have changed but my outcome hasnt. Ultimately for me it comes down to the players form in previous matches on the court/tournament their playing but here are few other factors thrown in. Ljubicic was last years winner and also won the title back in 2001(always a good motivator). The Croatian leads 5-2 in the head to head, winning all four meetings on hard court. Although I'm discounting the head to heads in this case because their last encounter in 2009 Shanghai Monfils was a heavy favourite but retired with a back problem at 6-2 3-0. Monfils back injury clearly was a problem right from the start. His whole game is based around his quick movement especially in defense and he could hardly move and had no power in his shots or his serve, he was solely relying on spin because of the lack of power. The other three hard court matches dated back to 2006 & 2005 when Ljubicic was in his prime, ranked in the top ten and Monfils wasnt beating anyone in the top ten and ranked around 30. This year Ljubicic has won 58% of the games against common players and Monfils has won 42%. On recent form I favour Ljubicic. The Croat is on fire at the moment and can beat the best of them when he's firing. He is playing some of the same tennis that saw him win the Indian Wells title in March where he beat top ten players like Nadal, Roddick, Djokovic. Not too many people can beat that line up. He then went on a shocker run for four months straight where he only won one game out of nine. But that all changed at the beginning of this month when he beat top ten players Youzhny and Murray although Murray hadnt played too much since the US Open. His first serve is his major weapon firing in 42 aces in his last two matches and his forehand is a cracker also. In comparison Monfils is also coming into form recently, in fact most people in the ATP would kill for his 43 wins and 19 losses this year but the only top ten player he has beaten this year was Roddick who had only just returned to the circuit after two months off and is in terrible form and is currently not worthy of his ranking. Roddick had matchpoint in that game and choked as per usual and yes that was one of the matches I had money on. Sure he just beat Tsonga in the last match, but again Tsonga had three months off recovering from a knee injury and only had his first game this month and yes that was the other match I had money on. Ljubicic beat Tsonga who was in good form easily in two sets this year in February at Dubai. Apart from the out of form Roddick and Tsonga, Monfils has only beaten two other players this year in the top 30 being Ferrer and Isner and Isner took the first set and yes I actually had Monfils to win first set. Isner's whole game is his serve take away that and I doubt he could win a challenger match in womens tennis. If Monfils is able to control his returns on Ljubicic's serve and keep it away from Ljub's forehand he might be able to run him around the court like he did with Isner but if Ljub hits his groundstrokes through Monfils and avoids rallies I think he is a strong chance. Cant believe Ljubicic is paying $2.50 to $2.60 ( +150 to +160 american) might take the safer option and take the line +3 games for the $1.90 or a first set win at $2.25 but I honestly think Ljub can win this outright.
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