Wawrinka and Nadal pose threat to Murray’s Queen’s trend

The start of the Aegon Championships, more commonly known as Queen’s, means the start of Wimbledon isn’t too far around the corner.

First though, eight of the world’s top 15 players arrive at the West Kensington club hoping to put in the perfect preparation for the grass Grand Slam, by winning the tournament.

The way the past six editions of the competition have panned out suggests Andy Murray is the man to back.

The Scot, who has been given the top seed for the week, has developed a one-on-one-off trend at Queen’s that means he should come in for some serious consideration in any staking plan.

Murray has triumphed at Queen’s every other year since claiming his first title there in 2009. Grigor Dimitrov’s victory in the tournament 12 months ago means that, statistically at least, 2015 should be Murray’s year.

Although he receives a bye in the first round and faces the winner of Fernando Verdasco’s match with Roberto Bautista Agut, the two-time Grand Slam winner won’t have things all his own way in London.

Both Stanislas Wawrinka, the recent French Open victor, and Rafael Nadal lie in the bottom half of the draw, while Marin Cilic lurks ominously in the top.

Wawrinka gets his championships underway as the 8/15 favourite against the heavy-hitting Australian Nick Kyrgios, while Nadal is rated at 1/4 by Ladbrokes to progress from his first-round match against Alexandr Dolgopolov.

Cilic finds himself at 1/3 to better Adrian Mannarino in his opener, while Dimitrov, who has Murray’s Wimbledon scalp on his CV and could meet the Scot in the quarter finals here, is 4/11 to beat Sam Querry.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.

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