The Battle of the Spaniards
Today’s battle between Fernando Verdasco and Rafael Nadal deserves good examination as the classic sports betting example of whether an underdog can upset the firm favourite given good betting returns. Many of the betting sites have Verdasco paying up to 6.25 – 1 so is there enough analysis to place some of the underdog betting percentage of our sports betting bankroll on him. Analysing the statistics and recent form helps.
Rafael Nadal has yet to drop a set leading in to this match and is looking very clean and clear about how to decipher his opponents and blow them away with winners. Her has yet to be tested by any of his opponents so far with Frenchman Simon Gilles taking 12 games of the world number one in their match. Looking at his statistics, Nadal is clearly using his ground shots to control his opponents with his usual style of not many aces, very low on unforced errors until the Simon game and keeping a consistent first serve percentage of the high sixties. Clearly Nadal has been playing a game that has yet to falter.
Verdasco has had a much less glowing run to the semi-final. He has dropped sets against Andy Murray and Jo Wilfried Tsonga. Both of them were title contenders. Verdasco has been striking the ball extremely well the last fortnight and has about the same amount of winners in his game as Nadal does. The telling statistic is whether he can keep his unforced errors down. Against both Murray and Tsonga, his unforced errors blew out to 50 and 29 respectively. Verdasco also has a relatively low second serve percentage won stat, with it being as low as 29% against Murray. Something he definitely cannot afford against the world number one.
It was this game last year that Nadal lost to Joe Wilfried Tsonga in the upset of the tournament. Nadal probably has this going through his mind and will make sure he comes out with his best game. One does not get to being number one without the ability of turning on the best game. So even though the odds are very tempting for an upset, this game looks clearly in Nadal’s favour so best to put away the long shot under dog bets for another day.
