OTW Extra Email Archive - July 2025

Notes from the Tour: The Cincinnati Shuffle...

Thursday 31st July 2025

The Cincinnati Open starts this time next week - Thursday 7th August…

Tournaments don’t normally start on a Thursday - or have finals played on weekdays, for that matter. But that is what this year’s somewhat unpopular/ experimental re-jigged Masters schedule has served up.

Cincinnati is the last Masters 1000 event on the calendar before the tour heads to New York for the final Grand Slam of the summer, the US Open.

Last season, the annual trip to Ohio produced a huge-odds result in the men’s tournament:

  • 100/1 shot Frances Tiafoe reached the ATP Cincinnati 2024 final, where he finished runner-up to world no.1, Jannik Sinner. That was Tiafoe’s first ever Masters 1000 final

That big-price outcome was nothing new in Cincy…

  • The year before, in the 2023 women’s event, Karolina Muchova was a 28/1 runner-up. That was also a career-first WTA 1000 final for Muchova

And before that, there had been surprises galore in Cincy…

  • In August 2022, Borna Coric was an out-of-the-blue 150/1 winner of the men’s title. While the women’s tournament that year saw Caroline Garcia take the trophy at 50/1, beating 80/1 Petra Kvitova in the championship match. That was the biggest title of Garcia’s career. And the same goes for Coric; it was also his only hard-court title to date

  • There were more giant odds in Cincinnati in 2021. Women’s runner-up Jil Teichmann put together a dream run, reaching the final having gone off as a 200/1 wildcard. Again, that was a career highlight for Teichmann…

  • The tournament didn’t take place in the Covid year of 2020. Prior to that, in 2019, Svetlana Kuznetsova was women’s runner-up from a starting price of 250/1… and David Goffin was a 50/1 finalist in the men’s…

The underdog message is clear…

With star names often more focused on the upcoming Major trip to New York for the US Open. The preceding trip to Cincinnati represents a great opportunity for lesser-known and lower-ranked players to get themselves a Masters 1000 final or trophy on their CV…

Next week, I’ll be on the case in Cincy, hunting out the latest big-odds chances, as is the Ones to Watch way:

We back appealing outsiders, at attractive Each Way prices…

And recent Cincinnati history says we’ll be in the right city for doing exactly that…

P.S
Not a paid-up Ones to Watch member yet? Join here to get next week’s Cincinnati selections…

Enjoy the tennis…

Best wishes,

Tom Wilson

Oliver Upstone

Ones to Watch