US Open Betting: Sharapova can shrug off the controversy to be a danger

Maria Sharapova has said she got goosebumps when she learned that the US Open had given her a wildcard to play her first Grand Slam event since her suspension was over.

After missing out on first the French Open and then Wimbledon - where she would have had to have gone through qualifying - through injury and dropping to number 149 in the world, it was indeed a generous gesture.

In France and in England there had been all sorts of worries about whether to make it easy for a champion who had failed a drugs test to return. What message would that send? There were all sorts of morality issues.

In America, though, they have looked only at the bottom line. Sharapova is box office, one of the biggest stars of the world game, the highest paid female athlete in the world for 11 years in a row, and they wanted her in.

So she will be the big story at the US Open when the tournament starts next Monday. Angelique Kerber, 26.00, may be the defending champion, Garbine Muguruza, 5.60, might be the favourite, but all the focus will be on Maria's return to the big time.

She has even added to the intrigue by pulling out of last week's Western and Southern Open (won by Muguruza) as a precaution to protect her recovery from the minor injury to her left forearm (she plays right handed) that forced her to withdraw from a tournament in Stanford two weeks earlier.

Opinion has been divided ever since Sharapova called that press conference to announce she had failed a test.

She claimed she'd been taking meldonium, which improves blood flow and so helps endurance, for 10 years after being prescribed the drug for a heart condition she had suffered since childhood, but had failed to open the e-mail announcing it had been added to the banned list.

Her fans had sympathy with her. "I've had strangers come up to me, like chefs coming out of the kitchen or pilots coming out of the cockpit, to say something (in support) and it has been so heartening" she said in an interview in Vogue magazine.

The rest of the tennis world weren't so sympathetic, with varying degrees of criticism right up to Eugenie Bouchard who called her a cheat.

We'll never know what difference taking meldonium made to a career that has seen her win five Grand Slams. What we do know is that she won't be returning now unless she believes she can win again.

With her huge rival Serena Williams missing from New York while she waits to become a mum, and the other leading players continually so inconsistent, Sharapova at 22.00stands out as sensational value in the market to be the women's winner.

Yes, there will be question marks about her fitness to sustain a two-week Grand Slam campaign after so much inactivity. But she definitely has the steel to handle the media circus that will surround her return, and the game to brush off most of the field at Flushing Meadow and then match the leading contenders.

Goosebumps at being allowed to play? That could be only the start of the story.