Wozniacki - should be too hot for Petrova.
DANE DESTINED FOR GREATNESS
By Andy Schooler
Sky Bet's Odds
Compare All Prices
This time last year Justine Henin was a 1/2 shot to keep her grip on the year-end world number one ranking.
Such was her dominance in 2007 that it looked a foregone conclusion.
Therefore there must have been plenty of angry punters out there when the Belgian announced her retirement, out of the blue, midway through the season.
Henin's departure has left a hole in the women's game, one summed up by the current market on 2009's year-end number one.
Instead of a red-hot, odds-on favourite, Jelena Jankovic sits atop the list a pretty cool jolly at 11/4.
The Serb did end the year pretty impressively, yet her end-of-season results really only masked the problems in her game.
Still without a Grand Slam title, Jankovic's game is more defensive than many of her peers and you only have to go back to the summer to remind yourself that the pundits then were saying she lacked the killer weapon to really make a big impact.
That said she has ended this year as the world number one and the ITF's world champion which is no mean feat.
It should be pointed out at this stage though that the 2009 rankings will be calculated slightly differently to this year - and that may well work against Jankovic.
Over the last two years, she has been one of the tour's most active players making full use of the fact that 18 tournaments counted towards her ranking.
However, that is down to 16 in 2009 which will give some of the less active players, such as the Williams sisters, more leeway.
With this in mind, the 11/4 isn't a price we'll be taking.
Neither is the 10/3 available about the injury-prone Maria Sharapova.
The Russian was one of four players to hit top spot following Henin's retirement but the fact that she ended her season in August due to more shoulder problems tells you all you need to know.
The serving shoulder has been an issue for some time now and it would be no surprise if Sharapova had to miss a significant part of the 2009 season too.
Admittedly she's a match for anyone when fully fit - her 27-2 record in the first five months of last season shows that - but I'd want much more than 10/3 about the Australian Open winner ending the year as the world's best.
It's a similar scenario for Serena Williams, who spent some time at number one following her impressive US Open victory.
With four titles in all in 2009, Williams proved once more that she's one of the toughest competitors on the tour when fit.
However, that's not that often - after her US Open success she managed to play just three more matches.
The ranking rule changes are also likely to hurt Serena, in one way in particular.
Indian Wells becomes one of four 'mandatory' events for all the leading names, but the Williams sisters refuse to play the Californian tournament after a long-standing row with the organisers.
If, as expected, they fail to show again they will immediately lose ground in the ranking race and could even be suspended from other tournaments.
Certainly the 4/1 isn't a price to tempt us in.
So if the market's leading trio shouldn't be backed, who should?
Well, looking further down the list we feel both Ana Ivanovic and Elena Dementieva could prove to be some value at 11/2 and 33/1 respectively.
With her thumping forehand firing, Ivanovic claimed her first Grand Slam title in 2008 at the French Open, taking the world number one spot in the process.
It was fully deserved at the time - the Serb had also been to the Australian Open final and won in Indian Wells.
However, after her Roland Garros glory things tailed off in the second half of the season.
Some blamed the pressure of being a Grand Slam champion, but it should also be noted that a thumb injury played its part in an awful run on the North American hardcourts.
Once recovered she bounced back to win in Linz at the end of the year.
Unlike some of her peers, that thumb problem was a one-off injury that shouldn't be a worry for potential backers and she should hit the ground running in 2009.
Another factor in her favour is she is an all-court player. She revels on the clay - unlike the likes of Sharapova and the Williams sisters who always suffer in the spring - with only the short grasscourt season regarded as anything of a problem. Even saying that, she is a former Wimbledon semi-finalist so it's hardly a major weakness.
Ivanovic may have slipped to fifth in the current rankings but she will have learned a lot in 2008 and with the Grand Slam duck broken, the 21-year-old should keep on improving over the next 12 months.
As for Dementieva, she's something of a wild-card pick but the 33s just looks a bit too big.
She may be 27 now, but the Russian enjoyed the best season of her career in 2008, reaching two Grand Slam semi-finals and winning gold at the Olympic in Beijing.
Most importantly, Dementieva was able to manage her notoriously fragile serve which broke down much less this year.
If that's in good working order, Dementieva is a tough player to beat as her groundstrokes are among the best in the game.
Dementieva ended the year ranked fourth but look deeper and you find her points tally of 3,663 was just 200 less than second-placed Serena Williams.
That suggests a slight improvement in 2009 - hardly beyond the realms of possibility - could at least earn Dementieva a place in this market.
Stan James and Berdirect offer a third of the odds for a place in the top two, so on those terms we're prepared to take them on.
That's our verdict on the outright WTA race, but arguably the best season-long bet for 2009 is in Blue Square's match bets.
The one we like the look of is Caroline Wozniacki to beat Nadia Petrova.
A former junior Wimbledon champion, Wozniacki is one of the rising stars of the WTA Tour. She flew up 52 places to 12th in the rankings over the course of 2008 and we're convinced she'll crack the top 10 very soon.
At just 18, Wozniacki had a pretty impressive Grand Slam record this year - two last-16 appearances and two other runs to the last 32.
Improving all the time, she'll now be eyeing more wins against top-10 players, but we feel those will come in due course.
And even if they don't it remains to be seen how much of fight Petrova will put up in this match bet.
The 26-year-old Russian did finish 2008 well but she's been notoriously fragile in terms of her health over the years. Already 2009 looks set to follow that pattern.
Certainly Wozniacki looks set to get a decent head start with Petrova, at time of writing, laid up in hospital with viral meningitis.
She's already ruled herself out of the season-opener in Auckland and her attendance at the Australian Open - a huge tournament in terms of ranking points - is very much in doubt.
BlueSq don't seem to have cottoned on to this yet and have kept their price at 5/6 each of two.
In normal circumstances, that seems a decent price about an improving player such as Wozniacki. Throw in Petrova's illness and it begins to look a real belter.
Get on while the price lasts.
The new WTA season gets under way on January 4.
Preview posted at 1515GMT on 17/12/2008.
