Looking for some of the best tennis betting tips online? You've come to the right place? In our below guide, we'll take you through our expert strategies, leaving no stone unturned to ensure that you place the most well-informed wagers possible.
4 Top Tennis Betting Tips
The court is set and the stakes are high! Let’s kick things off with our top tennis betting tips listed below.
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Don't Bet on the Favourites Blindly: We get it – betting on the heavy favourites always seems like a good idea. They're favourites for a reason, right? However, in sport, anything can happen. This is why it's important to consider crucial factors that can sway the outcome of a game. We're talking about elements like the match surface, players' current form, and even the weather conditions. Ignoring these aspects can lead to unexpected upsets and missed opportunities.The best example of what we're talking about involves the current #1 player in the world, the young Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who had quite the hiccup after winning the 2023 Madrid Open. Just a week after, he played in Rome and, even as the dominant favourite coming into the first match, lost to the 95th player in the world, Fabian Marozsan.This goes to show that the flattering title of the favourite isn’t an ideal factor to base your bets around. Punters who recognised this match as a potential opportunity for a hefty win got £2,300 for a mere £100 bet.
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Don't Underestimate the Importance of Stats: Here, we're mainly referring to an individual player’s statistics and recent performances that ought to give you a better chance of success in winning your bets.With a detailed analysis of stats including serve speed, breakpoint winning statistics, forced and unforced errors, and first and second serve percentage, you’ll have a much better understanding of both camps coming into the match. Based on all this information, you’ll be able to uncover research-driven insights that’ll help you form more accurate predictions.
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Keep Accumulators Simple: Here, we're mainly referring to an individual player’s statistics and recent performances that ought to give you a better chance of success in winning your bets.With a detailed analysis of stats including serve speed, breakpoint winning statistics, forced and unforced errors, and first and second serve percentage, you’ll have a much better understanding of both camps coming into the match. Based on all this information, you’ll be able to uncover research-driven insights that’ll help you form more accurate predictions.
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Court Surfaces and Weather Conditions Make a Big Difference: The most prestigious tennis tournaments are played on a number of surfaces (grass, clay, hard), each of which brings its own strengths and disadvantages for players.Some perform better on specific surfaces, with Rafael Nadal having won a staggering 91.5% of his matches on clay; his average win percentage is 83%. Let’s look at the differences between these court surfaces and how they affect player performance.
Grass Courts
The traditional surface at Wimbledon, grass courts are difficult to maintain, which is why we don’t see them that often. They offer much faster gameplay, however, as the ball bounces lower but a lot more quickly than it does on other surfaces. Grass requires faster reflexes, sees more action-packed matches, and typically results in much shorter rallies.
Clay Courts
Clay courts, despite their name, consist of crushed particles of stones and bricks. They’re also quite difficult to maintain as they tend to dry out in hot weather, and, due to their composition, cause the ball to decelerate upon impact. This results in slower-paced matches overall, as well as longer rallies, and players who heavily rely on strong serves typically lose that advantage too.
Hard Courts
Finally, hard courts. These are by far the most common option these days, offering the most balanced gameplay. Hard courts are slower than grass but faster than clay, and are often referred to as ‘neutral' due to their balanced nature. They’re made from macadam or concrete coated with an acrylic finish.
Best Tennis Tips for Betting on Outrights
Betting on the outright winner of a tennis event is inanely fun. It can lead to hefty wins too, especially if you’re able to find a valuable bet. However, as we mentioned above, you shouldn’t solely focus on the favourite for two reasons. Firstly, the odds are typically quite low, and secondly, tennis favourites tend to have massive clashes in the final two matches (semifinals and finals) which oftentimes throw up the unexpected.
Below are our top tips to take into account when betting on tennis outrights.
Look Up the Court Surface
First and foremost, find out on which surface the match in question is taking place (a simply Google search is usually all it takes). As we explained in detail in the previous section of this guide, each playing surface presents its unique challenges and advantages, influencing player performance and match outcomes.
Players often exhibit varying strengths and weaknesses on different courts, so it's important to understand whether or not their skills will align with the surface they'll be competing on.
Focus on the Top-Ranked Players
For the biggest tournaments, the winners are usually located in the top 10 challengers according to the outright winner betting odds. It’s on you to do a deep analysis of the top 10 or 20 players to figure out who has the best chance of creating an upset.
Analyse Previous Form
This one goes without saying – you should always analyse previous form no matter what your wagering ambitions are. When betting on outrights, you should not only explore players’ forms in general, but also – and especially – their head-to-head clashes with other key challengers on the playing surface.
Find the Most Valuable Bets
A valuable bet represents a bet in which you have the edge over the bookmaker, based on the combination of the likelihood of the selected outcome and its respective odds.
The favourites typically aren’t the most valuable bets, as they are usually assigned lower odds. But, if you can find a top 10 player who is in great form, has won recent head-to-head clashes against the main challengers, and performs exceptionally well on the specific court type, it’s the ideal scenario!
Major Tennis Markets
In this section, we’ll shortlist the most popular markets for betting on tennis and explain how they work.
Match Winner
Also known as Outright Winner, this market simply requires you to predict the winner of a tennis match. They don’t come much simpler than this, that’s for sure!
To give yourself an advantage here, look at the rankings for the two players competing to get a better understanding of who is in better shape. We also advise researching previous results, head-to-head clashes, and forced/unforced errors ratios.
Set Winner
Instead of betting on the winner of the whole match, these market involves correctly predicting the winner of a certain set.
To get the most out of this market, bet in-play! Once the match starts, you’ll get a sense of how things are unfolding along with the general momentum between both players. This means a great deal in tennis, and if you sense a shift in the overall gameplay, you could hit massive payouts with a perfectly timed Set Winner bet.
Over/Under Games
For this market, you need to figure out whether the amount of games played in a tennis match will be higher or lower than the number specified by the bookmaker.
If you want to take things up a notch, consider exploring this market in the live section – but only if you're watching the match unfold in real time. All you need to do is closely observe the players' performances, and seize the opportunity to spot potential turning points in the match.
Tennis Betting Strategies
Unlike football, tennis matches cannot end in a draw, so betting on two seemingly equally-strong players may be tricky. This is where match statistics could give you a helping hand!
In the case of equally matched players, both picks will have high-quality odds, making it difficult to choose between the two options. That's why we advise waiting for the match to get underway, allowing you to place live bets depending on how the momentum shifts.
Strong Servers
In tennis, the player serving is normally the favourite to win the point, so first odds will be higher on the player on the receiving end of the serve. Superstar Novak Djokovic, for example, has won more than 2/3 of the points he has served for.
Look out for instances when a player with a powerful serve faces an opponent with a higher ranking. In this scenario, the former is likely to have relatively higher odds while serving, despite being the underdog, so their odds might be favourable in such a matchup.
Point Betting
Most tennis betting sites offer the opportunity to bet on specific points to be won by one player or the other, as well as betting on the number of points there will be in a game. Here, we strongly recommend looking at the current form during the match to ensure your predictions are as accurate as possible.
Trends have shown that when the better-performing player serves, the number of points in the game tend to be low, especially if that player has a very strong service game. On the other hand, the number of points is likely to be higher when the player on the receiving end is the favourite, since they will be able to break the server’s service advantage.
One other important stat to consider is the percentage of aces a particular player manages to hit. This could determine how to place a bet on how many points a game might have.
Upcoming Tennis Tournaments to Bet on
Let’s take a closer look at the biggest upcoming tennis tournaments you can bet on in the remainder of 2023:
Biggest Upcoming ATP Tournaments in 2023
| Tournament | Category | Start Date | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Bank Open | Masters 1000 | 07/08/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
| Western & Southern Open | Masters 1000 | 13/08/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
| US Open | Grand Slam | 28/08/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
| Rolex Shanghai Masters | Masters 1000 | 04/10/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
| Rolex Paris Masters | Masters 1000 | 30/10/2023 | Indoor Hard |
| ATP Finals | Finals | 12/11/2023 | Indoor Hard |
Biggest Upcoming WTA Tournaments in 2023
| Tournament | Category | Start Date | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| Omnium Banque Nationale | WTA 1000 | 07/08/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
| US Open | Grand Slam | 28/08/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
| Western & Southern Open | WTA 1000 | 14/08/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
| Guadalaraja Open AKRON | WTA 1000 | 17/09/2023 | Outdoor Hard |
Tennis Points Explained
Tennis matches are won in sets. Normally, the player who wins the most out of 3 sets – or 5 sets in more important matches such as tournament finals – will emerge victorious in a match.
But how do you win a set?
Well, each set is a race to six games. Gameplay is split into 4-point games, and players will need to win six of these in other to win a set. Service stays on the same side as long as the players are competing to win the same game.
Point Counting
Points are the starting point for each game. For each point, players have a maximum of one bounce after the ball has arrived at their end of the court to hit it back over the net, and within the court boundaries of the opposing side. Each time a player fails to do so, a point is awarded to the opposing player.
Points carry different values and names, as we can see in the list below:
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0 points = Love
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1 point = 15
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2 points = 30
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3 points = 40
In order to win a game, players must reach 4 points before the opposing team reaches 3 points. If the points stand at 40-40, then the game has arrived at a “deuce“. In this case, the game will continue to be played until one players wins with a two-point advantage. At this point, the scoring system shifts to indicate whether a player holds an advantage, or if the game has returned to deuce again.
Let’s take a Player A/B example to explain this:
If Player A and Player B have arrived at a deuce and Player A wins the next point, then it’s Advantage A. If Player A wins the next point too, then Player A wins the game. However, if Player B wins the next point, Player A has lost his/her advantage and the game is back at a deuce. If Player B then wins the next point, then it’s Advantage B, and he/she must win the next point to win the game. If not, the game is back at a deuce once more. This will be repeated as many times as needed until a winner is declared.
Once the game is won, players will change sides and service.
Types of Sets
The players’ goal in a set is to win six games by two. But what happens if both players win five games?
That’s where the two different types of sets come in: the Advantage Set and the Tiebreak Set.
The rules of an Advantage Set are simple in this regard – the set must continue until a player wins it by two games. In the case of the Tiebreak Set, once the set arrives at 5-5, there are two further options available:
One player wins the next two sets and wins the set at 7-5.
The score reaches 6-6 and a tiebreak game is played. The winner of the tiebreak game will win the set 7-6.
What Is a Tiebreak Game?
A tiebreak game is played at the end of a tiebreak set when players have reached a score of 6-6.
The aim of a tiebreak is to reach 7 points with a gap of at least 2 points from the opponent. In this type of game, points will be counted in ascending order from 0 to 7 (not using the 15, 30, 40 system).
If the tiebreak game score is 6-6, the game will continue until one player wins the game by 2 points. Such a game could potentially have a score such as 20-18, depending on how long it takes for one player to achieve the 2-point margin.
In this game, players will switch ends every six points scored (when then score is 3-3, 5-1 or 4-2).
Tennis Ranking
In the tennis world, players gain points for every match in a tournament, with points weighted depending on the difficulty or importance of the match. In this way, they can be ranked against each other to see who is the best.
Below are the tables for the best-ranked male and female players at the time of writing.
Top 10 Male ATP Tennis Players – As of June 2023
| Rank | Player | Country | Age |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Carlos Alcaraz | Spain | 20 |
| #2 | Novak Djokovic | Serbia | 36 |
| #3 | Daniil Medvedev | Russia | 27 |
| #4 | Casper Ruud | Norway | 24 |
| #5 | Stefanos Tsitsipas | Greece | 24 |
| #6 | Holger Rune | Denmark | 20 |
| #7 | Andrey Rublev | Russia | 25 |
| #8 | Jannik Sinner | Italy | 21 |
| #9 | Taylor Fritz | USA | 25 |
| #10 | Frances Tiafoe | USA | 25 |
Top 10 Female WTA Tennis Players – As of June 2023
| Rank | Player | Country | Age |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Iga Świątek | Poland | 22 |
| #2 | Aryna Sabalenka | Russia | 25 |
| #3 | Elena Rybakina | Kazakhstan | 24 |
| #4 | Jessica Pegula | USA | 29 |
| #5 | Caroline Garcia | France | 29 |
| #6 | Ons Jabeur | Tunisia | 28 |
| #7 | Coco Gauff | USA | 19 |
| #8 | Maria Sakkari | Greece | 27 |
| #9 | Petra Kvitova | Czech Rep. | 33 |
| #10 | Barbora Krejickova | Czech Rep. | 27 |
ThePuntersPage Final Say
With the amount of tournaments available in a yearly calendar, it should come as no surprise that tennis betting has become so popular. Dramatic rallies, rocket services, cheeky scoops, acrobatic hits and a lot of close calls – there’s so much to love about the sport! In the betting world, the bigger the competition, the larger the variety of betting markets available, so there’s bound to be some very good opportunities around if you know where to look and follow our tennis tips!
Tennis Tips FAQ
Tennis matches are played in sets. Normally, the match will be a best-of-three or five, and the winner of the most sets wins the match.
A tiebreak game is played at the end of a set when the players have drawn 6-6 on games. They must then play a final game which will determine who will win that set. Points are normally counted in ascending order from 0 to 7, and the first one to reach 7 will win the game and hence the set.
A set point is called out when a player only has one remaining point to win the set.
The four Grand Slams are the most important tournaments in the calendar. Out of these, Wimbledon is regarded as the most prestigious.
The magnificent Spaniard, Carlos Alcaraz, has overtaken Novak Djoković and is currently the #1 ranked player on the ATP Tour Rankings.
At the moment, the 22-year-old Polish sensation Iga Świątek is the #1 player on the WTA Tour rankings.