Notes from the Tour: Why was the 2nd seed 33/1?

Thursday 1st October 2026

“How on earth did we get 33/1 on a second seed?”

That’s the question being asked by Ones to Watch member Simon. In response to our 33/1 pick Kimberly Birrell winning the Korea Open in Seoul last week…

And Simon’s not alone. I’ve had a stack of emails in after that big 33/1 winner. Including these:

So, why DID the bookies price up the Korea Open with 2nd seed Kimberly Birrell as a 33/1 outsider?

Here’s my take on it…

The simple, blunt answer is this:

It wasn’t a very high-quality field. With all due respect to the WTA Seoul event, its organisers, and most importantly – the players. The fact is last week’s tournament in Korea was not full of well-known names and high-ranked players…

Being a WTA 250-grade event, that puts the Korea Open in the lowest tier of the full, senior-level tournament structure (250, 500, 1000, and Grand Slams at the top).

As such, 250 events are often where we go looking for first-time title winners on the tour. Just like Kimberly Birrell last week, who age 28, went and won her maiden WTA title. In doing so, becoming the latest ‘late bloomer’ to join the 28 Club that I talk about so often in this column.

The star name and no.1 seed was Jelena Ostapenko. But she arrived on the back of past glories. A former WTA Seoul champion and French Open winner, the current world no.32 was once a Top 5 player. The Korea Open handed Ostapenko a wildcard last week. In other words, an invitation into a tournament that the 29-year-old Latvian may otherwise have not taken part in.

But the fact that the Korea Open didn’t feature a bumper crop of high-ranked players still doesn’t explain the big 33/1 price for Birrell as 2nd seed. My view here is that the oddsmakers simply weren’t keen on the Australian’s form – or her potential run through the draw…

Here’s how the top of the Outright Winner market looked at Bet365 last week, at the start of the tournament:

And here are the seeded players, as per the draw posted on the official WTA Tour website:

The seeds list shows a clear pattern of the higher the ranking, the higher the seed.

With those two lists of players to hand – the bookies’ favourites, and the top seeds – we can then pull out a key example from Birrell’s path from the 1st round through to the final…

As well as the question:

Why was the 2nd seed priced as a 33/1 outsider?

We also need to ask…

Why was the 6/1 favourite not seeded?

When I was doing my pre-tournament research, the fact that Katie Volynets was the bookies’ favourite – but not one of the eight named seeds – was the first jarring thing for me. The 24-year-old American has been rated as a prospect for some time, but is yet to win a senior WTA title, or crack the world’s Top 50. Perhaps the bookmakers gave great weight to the lower-tier title that Volynets had won on hard courts in August?

Ranked no.77 ahead of Seoul last week, Katie was one ranking spot behind Kamilla Rakhimova who was placed as 8th seed.

As it turned out, Birrell beat Volynets in the quarter final. Extending their career head-to-head to 3-2 in Kim’s favour, and 2-1 on hard courts.

Top seed and wildcard Ostapenko was in the opposite side of the draw to Birrell. Ostapenko was knocked out in the Last 16.

Back to my earlier point about the lack of top-level quality in that field. Of those eight seeds, only two of them had a previous WTA title win on hard courts on their career CV: top seed Ostapenko, and 34-year-old 7th seed Magda Linette. The other six seeds – including our selection Birrell, had either never won a title full stop, or never won one on hard courts.

• To be fair to the bookies. If you roll up the match-by-match odds from Birrell’s 5-match streak in Seoul, the hypothetical accumulator comes to around 30/1. Which sits just between the 33/1 and 28/1 outright prices advised to my members

Ultimately, there’s no substitution for doing your homework, knowing the prices, knowing the players, following the form – and then forming your own opinion. Which is what I do.

Second seed syndrome?

Ones to Watch member Sunil has emailed in to ask if there is any evidence of a ‘2nd seed pattern’ – in terms of getting value prices by backing the no.2 seed in tournaments, as opposed to the top seed/ favourite…

It’s an interesting angle to look at, for sure. In any tournament draw, the 1st and 2nd seeds will be kept apart – placed in opposite sides of the draw, meaning they can only meet in the final (should they both get there).

High-profile examples from 2026 at the Grand Slams:

• Alexander Zverev won the men’s French Open for his maiden Major title, having gone off as the 2nd seed at odds of 11/1. The German was also runner-up at Wimbledon this summer at 10/1 as 2nd seed. Although both of those examples need a note by them to say that Carlos Alcaraz was missing through injury – and Zverev would’ve been 3rd seed if Alcaraz had played

• Elena Rybakina won the women’s US Open as 2nd seed. Paying odds of 14/1, which in hindsight does look big for a player who also won the Australian Open on hard courts this year

This is an area I’ll keep an eye on in my research. The smaller events, due to their status, like last week’s WTA 250 in Seoul, are more likely to throw up the big-odds moments for otherwise unheralded seeds, like 33/1 Birrell.

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Enjoy the tennis…

Best wishes,

Oliver Upstone

Ones to Watch