New for the 2018 season from TennisRatings are the Pressure Points Data Spreadsheets.
Similar to the lead loss/recovery spreadsheets, the Pressure Points Data Spreadsheets will be updated regularly (most weeks) and in conjunction with the information in the lead loss/recovery spreadsheets and the daily ATP/WTA sheets, they will be an extremely useful trading tool for the tennis markets.
The methodology behind the Pressure Points Data Spreadsheets is straightforward – essentially, the sheets reflect player performance in the latter stages of each set (*4-2 onwards) – effectively the pressure points of sets, which with these scorelines are close, single break sets, but the player with a break lead will be looking to retain their lead and win the set/match, while the player a break behind will know that he needs to recover this quickly in order not to lose the set/match.
The benefits of laying the leading player at this stage of the match are twofold.
1 – There is considerable time decay in the set, with the service games of the player leading being *4-2, *4-3, *5-3, *5-4 or *6-5. Therefore at this late stage of the set, the price of the leading player will be much closer to the ‘end of set price’(for the first set) or 1.01 (if the player is a set & break up, or leading in the final set), compared to say, at *1-0, or *2-1. Therefore the lay price of the leading player will be lower than earlier in the set, and thus, our risk is less.
2 – With the scoreline close in the set, a break-back will have a considerable impact in terms of reward, with there being a very considerable swing in price if a break-back is achieved.
With these obvious benefits in mind, it is interesting to note that some players have extremely high (compared to the mean figures for each tour) break lead loss percentages from these scorelines, not to mention some boast very high break deficit recovery figures as well. All data is split via set, with data available for first set break leads, set and break leads and final set break leads, as well as combined data and combined sets 2 & 3 data (where the break leader simply has to hold serve to win the match, and the player a break down must break to have a chance of staying in the match).
