Notes from the Tour: What's the Wimbledon average?

Thursday 12th February 2026

After a phone-call with an esteemed racing analyst last week, I’ve been looking into my tennis stats with a new slant…

If you’re a maths whizz, forgive any basic stuff in the following write-up. As I have never claimed to be a mathematical guru…

In fact, Maths was my lowest grade in secondary school. I was always more of a words man. Anyway…

Emerging myself in the betting world for the last 20 years and more, the ability to do a bit of number-crunching has become a necessary string to the bow.

What’s more, these days, I enjoy getting my head into betting figures and form stats. The feeling when you come across an intriguing pattern that just might pick the lock to the next big winner is the equivalent to successfully panning for gold…

As the current tennis season unfolds – with the big summer schedule to come – I’ll be using this column to share as many stats ‘nuggets’ as I can with you.

Today, a simple one. With the most famous tournament of them all being a good place to start…

If you’ve been following Ones to Watch for a good while, you’ll know that I love to go after the big prices in the big tournaments. Especially when there’s evidence to support that approach…

If you pinned me up against the wall and demanded that I tell you a ‘betting stat’ about Wimbledon, I’d wipe away the sweat, and tell you this ONE piece of advice:

Bet on outsiders in the women’s.

If you let go of my collar and allowed me to compose myself, I’d elaborate, and explain the Ones to Watch mantra: we go after appealing outsiders, at attractive Each Way prices…

We’re not just looking to back any old underdog. We take aim with purpose…

Big prices in the women’s – whatever the method…

I was on the phone to my long-time racing associate Nick Pullen last week. Nick’s a smart man. He’s always got something interesting to say about the betting game…

Nick dropped into the conversation something about paying attention to the median average when looking at winning prices. And I realised I had perhaps rather lazily or naively been concentrating on the more common mean average for many years now.

Nick’s point being, that the median is more likely to shake out any outliers in the data. A crazy 300/1 winner or two could distort a spreadsheet ordinarily comprised of 4/1 and 12/1 shots. Simple stuff I’m sure to those of you who are more into maths than me.

So, I went to my self-assembled spreadsheet. And taking Wimbledon as the tournament of choice, went and applied all three of the types of average that they taught me back in school (see, I do remember): mean, median, and mode.

Here’s the shakedown. Whichever way you look at it, over the last five years, the women’s event has produced finalists at greater average prices than the men’s:

That’s worth knowing as we head towards the heart of the tennis season this summer…

Especially seeing as I’ve sent out my first Wimbledon women’s early-bird pick of the year, today…

If you’re reading this and you’re already a Ones to Watch member, then you’ll have seen that advice already at lunchtime today…

If you’re NOT yet a member. Fear not… join the club right now, and you’ll get instant access to that big-odds, ante-post Wimbledon analysis & advice, right away, on our members-only website.

Here’s a clue. Her surname ends with an ‘a’…

Although there’s currently 19 players in the women’s world top 50 that fit that criteria, so that won’t help you too much. Maybe I’m a words man and a numbers man, after all…

Join here to get today’s Wimbledon early-bird pick >>

Enjoy the tennis…

Oliver Upstone

Ones to Watch