2023 Wimbledon picks: Quentin Halys vs. Jannik Sinner odds, prediction

The 2023 men’s Wimbledon Championships has been priced as a two-horse race between odds-on favorite Novak Djokovic and World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz. After Round 2, Djokovic was -165 to win the tournament while Alcaraz entered his second match with +320 odds to lift the trophy.

With so much attention being focused on the potential final between Djokovic and Alcaraz, it’s been easy to lose track of the other contenders like Jannik Sinner, who is currently the third-choice to win at +1600.

Sinner, who lost an epic five-set match to Djokovic in the 2022 Wimbledon Quarterfinals, came into 2023 with high expectations and was pegged by plenty to win his first Grand Slam. The season has not gone as planned, though, as the Italian has underwhelmed his lofty expectations. A deep run at the All England Club could change all of that in a hurry.

Sinner has yet to drop a set in his first two matches at Wimbledon and is a prohibitive -700 favorite to defeat Quentin Halys on Friday and get to the Round of 16.

Will it be another straightforward day for the Italian wunderkind?

So much in Grand Slam tennis comes down to the draw and Sinner has enjoyed a relatively smooth path to this point in the tournament. The 21-year-old dispatched World No. 111 Juan Manuel Cerundolo, a clay-courter, with ease in the first round and then was able to overpower the struggling Diego Schwartzman, another player who doesn’t care for grass-court tennis, in straight sets in the Round of 64. You can only beat who is in front of you, but Sinner has not really been tested at the All England Club just yet.

That will change on Friday. While the odds tell us that Sinner should be able to handle Quentin Halys, this could be a tricky endeavor for the Italian.

Unlike Cerundolo and Schwartzman, Halys is a player with the tools to play an aggressive style of tennis on the grass court. The Frenchman has one of the biggest serves on the ATP Tour — he ranks fourth in Ace Percentage in 2023 — and has the third-highest win rate in his service games. Like plenty of big servers, Halys isn’t great on return, but he should be able to win enough quick, cheap games when he has the ball to force this match into the deep end of the pool.

As long as Halys has his serve working, he should be able to turn this match into a tighter affair than the odds suggest. We should expect a couple of tie-breakers, which should make the margin for error quite thin. When that’s the case, you’d rather be on the big underdog than the huge favorite.

The Bet: Quentin Halys +500 (DraftKings)

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