Tennis Betting Advice - March 2020
The tennis news is changing by the hour...
Thursday 12th March 2020
In your Ones to Watch email today:
The immediate future...
The coronavirus situation continues to dominate the world news, and now the back pages, too.
Things are changing by the day and by the hour.
With regards to the tennis, since I started writing you this email this afternoon, the Miami Open has officially been called off. Quickly followed by the ATP Tour suspending all men’s tournaments for six weeks. The WTA are set to make an announcement soon, too.
It doesn’t feel quite right to push on with my original plan for today. I was going to take an early-bird look at some big prices for the US Open. But New York in September feels a long way off right now.
The Outright markets for the three remaining Grand Slams in 2020 are hardly likely to change much over the next few days. We’ll return to that topic soon enough.
A temporary suspension of tournaments is not the end of the world. Human lives and health are of course the priority behind all this. These measures are precautionary, and for a limited time only.
We will be back in full-on Ones to Watch action as soon as things on the global scene improve. When I have more details about the tennis calendar, I’ll be right back in touch with you on that topic.
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While I’m with you today, I thought I’d share with you my tennis notes from the last few days...
The harsh beauty of the tennis scoring system...
Last week seems a long time ago. We saw a stack of rollercoaster matches in the two women’s tournaments in Lyon & Monterrey. Our Ones to Watch picks were involved in a couple of them…
in Lyon, the 11/4 (3.75) tournament favourite Sofia Kenin got back to winning ways after a brief ‘post-Grand Slam slump’ – recording her first victories on the WTA Tour since winning the Australian Open in January.
Kenin nearly went out in the 2nd round in Lyon, though, fighting back from a set and a break down – and saving a match point. The American’s next four matches all went the distance to a third set, too. Including the quarter final against our outsider pick Oceane Dodin.
Kenin then edged out our other Lyon selection in the semi finals, scraping past Alison Van Uytvanck by literally the closest score-line possible, 7-6, 6-7, 7-6.
In Monterrey, our 20/1+ shot Anastasia Potapova saved three consecutive match points in the 2nd round. The 18-year-old came back from the brink to win that match.
In the quarter finals, the tables were turned, with Potapova unable to take two match points against Johanna Konta. The score-line ended up as another close one, Konta coming from 2-5 down in the final set to take the match on a tiebreak, 6-7, 6-3, 7-6.
The small margins went against us last week. But other weeks, saved match points and final-set tie-breaks will go our way, too. It’s a great feeling when it does…
In St Petersburg last month, our 25/1 pick Elena Rybakina saved match points in the quarter finals. Our player then went on to reach the final, providing us with an Each Way place payout.
Our 2020 strike-rate...
At Ones to Watch, we back appealing tournament outsiders at attractive Each Way odds. That’s what we do. If we get a player into a quarter final or beyond at a double-figure price, then we’re doing well.
That quarter-final-and-better benchmark is one way that I like to measure our weekly Outright Winner picks over the course of the year. If they regularly go ‘deep’ into a tournament, then our picks are giving us plenty of potential winning situations…
Last season, our 2019 averages were:
So far in 2020, the numbers are looking strong:
And in those finals so far this year, we’ve had three winners (Alexandrova 16/1, Kenin 50/1, Garin 10/1), and two runners-up for Each Way payouts (Thiem 22/1, Rybakina 25/1).
When the tennis returns, we’ll be looking to keep that run going. I’ll be in touch with more news for you soon.
Best wishes,
Tom Wilson