How to Bet Wimbledon
HOW TO BET WIMBLEDON — It’s July, and that means we’re about to hit one of the slowest months on the sports calendar. We’ve still got plenty of soccer and baseball, but three of the five major team sports are now in a pause until August.
But there’s still plenty of betting options available if you’re willing to search individual sports. Jay Delsing and Nate Perry do a fantastic job with the weekly PGA tournaments, and they’ll have you covered all summer. But summer means another individual sport worth betting: tennis. More specifically, July means the greatest tennis tournament of all: Wimbledon.
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Wimbledon (officially the Championships, but only All-England Club employees call it that) is hallowed ground, and it’s easily the most important tennis tournament on the calendar. It’s the third Grand Slam of the year, but it’s the most important one for its tradition. It’s also got plenty of betting options on both the Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ sides of the draw.
If you’ve never bet tennis before, some of these bets might seem overwhelming. Here’s a beginner’s guide to betting on Wimbledon.
Futures Betting Strategy
The simplest part of tennis betting is also the toughest: choosing a champion. Unlike golf, where you’re trying to beat the course as well as the field, tennis requires you to win seven straight one-on-one matches. The men play best-of-5 sets, the women play best-of-3. So when you back a futures play, you want someone who’s got the endurance to get through two grueling weeks.
You also want someone who is comfortable on grass. In tennis, surface matters more than almost anything. Grass is the fastest surface there is, because the ball does not bounce very high on grass. On clay courts, such as at the French Open, points can last for a long time because of high bounces. On grass, having a strong serve makes a big difference.
Avoid the Double
Years ago, one of the best ways to make money was betting against the French Open champion. There were two reasons for this. First, the French usually went to clay-court specialists who bombed out on grass. The best example of this was Thomas Muster, who won the French Open in 1995 but never won a match at Wimbledon in his career. Over time, that’s died down as all-court players have become more common, but it’s still very hard to do the double.
And that’s because of the other reason: minimal time between the two Slams. The winner doesn’t even get a month after the French final before playing round 1 in London. Winning one Grand Slam is hard; winning two in six weeks is insanely difficult. In the past 40 years, only three men — Rafael Nadal (twice), Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic — and two women — Steffi Graf (four) and Serena Williams (twice) — have won the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year.
This year is harder on the men’s side, because Carlos Alcaraz is both the defending Wimbledon champion and the French Open champion. He’s going off at +250, which isn’t good enough odds to offset the grueling double. On the women’s side, fading Iga Swiatek makes perfect sense. The Pole’s best surface is clay, and she’s never come close to winning Wimbledon. She’s won four of five French Opens, but she’s only ever reached Wimbledon’s quarterfinals last year.
Players to Target
Ons Jabeur and Jessica Pegula offer excellent odds for players who are comfortable on grass. Jabeur’s best surface is grass by a mile, and she’s made the Wimbledon final two years running. At +1400, she’s getting very generous odds. Pegula just won a grass tournament in Berlin, and she’s now ranked fifth in the world. This tournament could be a breakthrough, and she goes off at +2000. Further helping them is the past two Wimbledon ladies champions have been first-time Slam winners.
For the men, Jannik Sinner doesn’t offer good odds at all, but there’s a reason for it. Most of the best men’s players aren’t very comfortable on grass, and Novak Djokovic is recovering from knee surgery. Taking Sinner at +175 isn’t great, but he’s the best bet by default.
Betting Individual Matches
For individual matches, you’ll be able to bet on spreads, totals and moneylines. Spreads can be a bit confusing in tennis, as there’s not a clean result like in football or basketball.
To figure out a spread, add up the number of games won in each set by each player. For example, if Alex Bolt is +4.5 against Casper Ruud, Ruud would have to win five more games than Bolt over the course of the match. If Ruud wins 6-4, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, Ruud will have won 19 games to Bolt’s 17, making Bolt +4.5 the winner. Because of the nature of tennis, the winner of the match can win fewer games overall, so you’ll need to know your math here.
What Prop Plays Exist?
Individual prop plays are a great way to bet matches. One popular way to bet is to bet on a player to win at least one set. If one player is heavily favored but grass isn’t their best surface, betting them to lose a set is a great idea.
You can also bet on the total number of games won. For players with good endurance, taking such a bet can really pay off.
Finally, you can bet two players against each other in the tournament. DraftKings offers a choice of which player you think will go further between two big names, which can give you someone to support throughout the event at a lesser risk.
