Tennis Trading Advice: How Can Interruptions Affect Trading Strategies?

This article deals with how to include the weather conditions and other interruptions as part of your trades especially on Heavy staked matches. I use rain as an example of an interruption to a match. Bear in mind that a tennis match may be interrupted for many other reasons including injury and bad light. Or the closing of the roof at Wimbledon!

The first question that someone may have in mind is, how do interruptions really affect trading strategy? The fact is, it can have big a impact on players especially in Grand Slams when expectations are high!

For me, the best example to put in this article is last year’s French Open Final between Nadal and Djokovic.

The final scoreline of this match was Nadal winning 6-4,6-3, 2-6, 7-5.

The first two sets were dominated by Nadal. However, in the 3rd, Djokovic stormed back to win the set 6-2. He was then up a break in the fourth set and was about to serve with a 2-1 lead when the heavens opened.  The rain forced the match to be played on Monday where eventually Rafa won the fourth set 7-5.

For me, the above story was a cruel ending to Djokovic’s amazing comeback which was literally halted by the rain!! Physically he looked much fitter at that time and had the match dragged on, for me it was a certain 5th setter!

If you were trading on this match and you had laid Rafa at very low odds, your Golden Green possibilities were seriously damaged by the intrusion of rain. It basically points out that if rain indeed interrupts the match at any point, there is a good chance of the favourite coming back especially if his physical state was crumbling before the rain. It’s a very important factor which cannot be ignored.

One  point of this article really is that there is no problem in considering a weather forecast upfront before the match starts. If you are trading heavy on any match, you should absolutely like to know everything that can possibly affect your trading, in this case, the weather..

Another more recent example was the seemingly terrible decision by the ref in the Murray/Janowicz semi final at this years Wimbledon to close the roof when Murray was 2 sets to 1 up. This didn’t turn out badly for Murray in the end but you could understand Murray’s anguish at the decision. He didn’t want to give his opponent time to regroup and come back out fighting. Murray had him on the ropes and was moving in for the knockout blow. Anyone watching the match might have been slightly worried about Murray’s mental state as he left the court while the roof was closed. Janowicz, on the other hand, would have been delighted to have the break. At this point I traded out on Murray (with profit) because of this uncertainty. However, as we know, Murray came through with relative ease but it could have turned out differently.

Obviously, not every match will be influenced by interruptions, but the Rafa-Djokovic match that I have pointed above was a very big lesson because not only was there an interruption, but it also affected the match at a very crucial stage..Who knows what would have happened if there was no rain!?

To sum up, interruptions can affect matches hugely, but the timing of the interruption is also crucial. If the score is 1-1 in the first set, an interruption is highly unlikely to have an effect on the outcome. But if it happens at a crucial time like in the examples above, you might need to adjust your strategy accordingly.

Thanks for reading…