Tennis Betting Advice - January 2025
Australian Open: 100/1 Keys in the Semi Finals...
Wednesday 22nd January 2025
100/1 shots aren’t supposed to get to the Semi Finals…
Our pre-tournament pick Madison Keys is doing us proud at the Australian Open…
The 29-year-old American is through to the Semi Finals in Melbourne, for the third time in her career…
She’s never won one here before. But as I alluded to when putting Keys up as a 100/1 outsider on 8th January, this is a slightly different Maddie to the player we’ve seen choke away big moments in the past…
Whether it’s age, experience… getting married last autumn… post-injury perspective… maturity… the new service motion and new Yonex racket…
Who knows…
But the Madison Keys I’ve seen so far this fortnight seems more relaxed, confident, and big-match ready than in the past.
Our top-price 100/1 Each Way pick is now 16/1 at best, with the bookies now betting Win Only in the revised Outright Winner market.
Even if you got on Maddie at some of the 80/1, 66/1, 50/1, 33/1… that has been available at various stages since we first flagged her up for the Aussie Open this month…
You’re sitting on a big price for an in-form player. Keys has won 10 matches in a row…
On Thursday morning, around 10am UK time, Keys will step out onto the Rod Laver Arena to compete in the women’s Semi Final against Iga Swiatek…
For our big-odds Ones to Watch, Each Way tournament selections, the Semi Final is the ‘Money Match’:
Win tomorrow morning, and Keys will secure us a half-the-odds Each Way payout for reaching the Final. With of course the big dream-ticket win-part poking out the pocket if that happens, too…
I’m counting no chickens. Swiatek is the big favourite. Keys is the underdog. Our player is 4/1 to win the match…
If you’re on Keys at 100/1 Each Way, then the place part means you’ve effectively got 50/1 for Maddie to beat Swiatek.
That’s 50/1 for a 4/1 shot…
As ever, it’s an exciting position to be in. This is what we live for here at Ones to Watch.
And as ever, we’re the underdogs…
But stranger things have certainly happened than a Top 20 player beating a world no.2…
For what it’s worth, the career head-to-head is 4-1 to Iga Swiatek. But… in their only two clashes to be played in the faster conditions of outdoor hard courts, the record is tied at 1-1…
Such is the scale of Swiatek’s favouritism in the betting here, the downside is we have little if any wiggle-room to shuffle into a decent win-win situation. You’d have to give up a lot of your original bet & potential returns to back Iga at short odds.
In other words, as I see it: the 100/1 Each Way bet is all riding on tomorrow morning’s big match…
As the old sporting cliché goes, if you’d told me before the tournament that we’d have a 100/1 shot in the Semi Finals - then I’d have bitten your hand off…
We’re on the biggest underdog left standing in the women’s Australian Open. And we backed her before a ball was hit. Not many people can say that.
Enjoy the tennis…
Best wishes,
Oliver Upstone