Wimbledon ends and its back to the red dirt

After a fair amount of applied mathmatics, it appears that I managed to make a profit on Wimbledon after all.

Venus Williams' victory in the ladies singles was backed at 20-1 at the start of the tournament and 50-1 and 55-1 when she was struggling badly on the seed's graveyard of Court 2 in the early rounds. This more than made up for a shocking day involving defeats for James Blake, Anna Chakvetadze, an apparently injured Martina Hingis and Dimitry Tursunov all on the same day, which put a severe downer on a couple of odds against wins for Mathieu over Ljubicic and Tipsarevic over Gonzalez.

As pleased as I was with Venus' success, I would have won more had I not been wary of the possible danger of Henin in the final and so laid quite of bit of Venus off in preparation for an all-profit final outcome. Of course, Bartoli ends up dispensing with Henin in an unbelievable semi final match and taking some of my hard-earned with her!

My stubborn refusal to back Federer for the mens title left me supporting Nadal in the final and thanks to a strong performance by the Spaniard I was able to come out with a small profit after backing the Fed Express when a couple of break points down in the fifth set. This was the one time in the entire fortnight that Federer was odds against!

The three tournaments this week have the look of a bit of value about them and I'm getting involved in Nicolas Mahut on the grass of Newport, Rhode Island at a very reasonable 4-1 with Betfair. The field is very poor and Mahut and the recovering Nicolas Kiefer look the class acts to be on, although Kiefer has limited appeal at 2.75-1 given his injury situation.

The Swedish Open looks interesting too, with my investment heading in the direction of Nicolas Almagro and Fernando Verdasco; two guys who you wouldn't want to rely on too heavily, given their temperaments and lack of consistency. Robredo looked vulnerable at the top of the draw and has just been knocked out as I write by Luis Horna, so I'm hoping for a smooth passage for Almagro now. Juan Monaco also looks good, but a poor value price put me off.

The Swiss Open, also on the red dirt looks very competitive, so I'm on Mikhail Youzhny in the easier looking bottom half and the in-form Paul-Henri Mathieu and class act Igor Andreev in the top half all at decent prices. This tournament has top tenner's Davydenko (is there a week ever when he doesn't play a tournament?!) and a possibly injured Gasquet competing, so it looks a tough one to call.

Nothing stands out enough for me to abandon my policy of avoiding backing heavy odds-on shots in the first round of a tournament, especially given the change of surface for the two clay court events, so no bets today so far. I am tempted by odds-against Gimelstob to take Spadea out in the first round on the grass of Newport though, so maybe later on.