The recent success of Jurgen Melzer (14/1) in Vienna illustrates the huge significance of 'home advantage' in tennis form. It's a factor which has been highlighted many times on the site when concerned with match betting and, naturally, the same applies to tournament outright markets.
Age, current form, past record, seeding - all these factors should be a guide to your betting and nationality is another crucial consideration when you study the chances of any given player.
The table opposite lists all the winners and finalists in 2009 who were playing on home soil. That's no fewer than 15 winners (W) and 16 runners-up (RU) from a total of 62 events played so far on the ATP Tour this year.
Narrow the field with homegrown players
This means that on average the final of one out of every two tournaments features a player from the country in which the event is played - that narrows the field down somewhat. And on 5 occasions the final has been an exclusive 'home' match between two native players.
Nadal winning in Spain, Djokovic in Serbia, Murray in England - these aren't hugely surprising feats (and all three were favourites for the respective tournaments) but consider Devvarman in Chennai at 250/1, Sluiter in s'Hertogenbosch at 200/1, Odesnik and Ram in the USA at 150/1 and 250/1 respectively.
These are players at colossal prices who over-perform when they play on home soil. Their level of play being lifted far beyond what could normally be expected... and that's why you find them making finals at such massive prices.
However, such feats happen far too often to be put down to mere coincidence, this is a pattern of performance which you can study and profit from - now that it has been brought to your attention.
A truly global game
The strange thing is that tennis is probably the most global of all sports - with the top players competing in more diverse locations during the calendar year than the leading golfers and footballers - and many players are quite at home playing in Tokyo or Toronto, Melbourne or Marseille, Buenos Aires or Belgrade. You wouldn't know they were playing thousands of miles from home.
Why, therefore, do so many hit their peak when playing in their own backyard?
Luckily, it's not for us to work out (but factors such as familiar surroundings, home support and acclimatisation to time/temperature/conditions must have an effect). All we have to do is take the hint from all the results you see listed opposite and pay extra special attention to players who are in action in their home country, if not their hometown.
