Ladies' French Open

By Nishant Joshi

With the return of Justine Henin, this year's French Open takes on a hugely different complexion to 2009. Arch rival Kim Clijsters sadly misses out due to injury, and a host of stars such as Sharapova, Azarenka (eliminated in R1), Wozniacki, Ivanovic, Kuznetsova and Safina are either well out of form, and/or injured.

This frees up a whole chunk of the betting market, and leaves us with only a handful of realistic contenders. Henin leads the outright betting at 3.3, but has shown that she hasn't yet regained the form of her glory days. She may return to top form at her favourite venue of Roland Garros, but being unseeded, she has a particularly tough route to the final and so it would be folly to back her at current prices, when backing her in-play in each match would get much better value.

Serena and Venus Williams are towards the top of the betting as well, but in reality, they don't deserve to be anywhere near favourites. In all their 23 combined attempts at the French Open, the sisters have just one singles title between them (Serena in 2002), and so we'll look elsewhere.

Jelena Jankovic is the player who stands out to me right now - in a WTA field where only she and Venus have been reliably consistent in 2010, JJ is most likely to cause a stir at Roland Garros. She certainly has the game for clay, and mentally she seems to be in a fantastic spot right now - she is quite a fickle personality (aren't all women?) but she has been smiling on court recently, which is always a good sign for her. As a slight introvert, it's always a good sign to see her enjoying her game. Her tennis has been pretty outstanding and she shouldn't be such a huge price in my opinion. She is the form player on tour and with so many question marks over every single other player - even though big names are present, I can't stress just how poor a field this is - Jankovic is worth a leap of faith.

NJ's Bet: Jankovic to win French Open - 4pts @ 8.0 (Boylesports)

Nishant Joshi