Throughout the course of the 2024 tennis season, VSiN will have you covered with picks and predictions for some of the year’s biggest events. Last year, our readers would have done very well if they listened to our advice, and the 2024 Australian Open was also extremely profitable for us. We’re hoping to keep things going in a positive direction the rest of the year, but we know that part of the fun in sports betting is doing it yourself. With that in mind, here are some things you can do to help yourself become smarter when it comes to tennis betting.
MORE: Check out our Pro Picks page for everything our experts are betting!
Know The Conditions And Importance Of Every Tournament
Before placing any bets, you want to know whether the match is being played on hard courts, grass courts or clay courts. The tennis season usually begins with three months on hard courts. From there, it’s three months on clay and then a month on grass. After that, the remainder of the year is usually played on hard courts. But some players are completely different players on certain surfaces, so make sure you do the research before betting.
You also want to make sure you know how important a tournament is. The ATP Tour and WTA Tour both have 250-level events, 500-level events and 1000-level events. The higher the number, the more important a tournament is. And the more important a tournament is, the more you can trust a player to compete at their highest level. Of course, the four majors — Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open — are bigger than all three of those previously-mentioned events. And the ATP Finals and WTA Finals fall somewhere in between.
Just knowing some of these simple things will make a big difference when making picks.
Look At Head-To-Head Results
You don’t want to blindly follow head-to-head results, but it’s important to know if a player has an advantage over an opponent. Tennis is a mental sport and confidence is key. That’s just part of being out on that court completely by yourself. So, if you don’t have the belief that you can beat the player on the other side of the net, you’re doing yourself an immediate disservice. These are things you can easily research before you dive into tennis betting.
Analyze Recent Form And Activity
As previously mentioned, confidence is key in tennis. And I’d actually say that recent form is one of the most overlooked aspects of handicapping tennis. It’s simply never a good idea to back somebody that is playing poorly against somebody that is on a heater. Even if a player is racking up wins in the lower levels of tennis, like in Challenger events, that person is in better shape than somebody that hasn’t been consistently getting across the finish line.
Similarly, you want to see the types of matches both competitors are playing heading into a match. If one player has played five clay-court matches before a clay-court event and the other is playing a first on the surface, that’s a big edge to the player that got some experience on the dirt.
Don’t Fall For Traps
This is true of pretty much every sport but if something looks way too easy then it’s probably best to stay away. One of the first things I do when looking at a slate is try and find a very lowly ranked player that is either favored or barely an underdog against a household name. Tennis is a sport in which the oddsmakers are constantly trying to catch people sleeping, so do everything you can to avoid getting suckered into a bet. One of the reasons tennis betting can be so profitable is because the books tend to give things away with their odds.
Our tennis betting splits can you help you with this. Try not to get caught betting on a player that is getting a heavy majority of the bets. Of course, it’s possible to win in that scenario. But “the house always wins” for a reason. So, you don’t want to find yourself siding with the majority of the public more often than you need to.
Shop For The Best Price And Get Creative
Like every other sport, different books have different odds on certain matches. So, sign up for as many as possible and make sure you’re getting a good price. DraftKings Sportsbook does have a pretty incredible offering for tennis bettors though. That’s generally where I find the best prices on futures.
Tennis is also a sport in which it benefits you to get creative with your bets. I don’t always like underdogs to go out and win matches, but books offer total game props for each individual player. So, if you think an underdog is going to win Over 6.5 games but not cover a game spread, you can always jump on something like that. I do it quite often when it comes to tennis betting.