Tennis betting tips: 2024 Grand Slam preview and best antepost bets

Tennis betting tips: 2024 Grand Slams

0.5pt e.w. Stefanos Tsitsipas in the Australian Open at 50/1 (Sky Bet 1/2 1,2)

1pt win Casper Ruud in the French Open at 30/1 (Unibet, BetUK, BetMGM)

1pt e.w. Matteo Berrettini in Wimbledon at 33/1 (bet365, LiveScoreBet 1/2 1,2)

1pt e.w. Holger Rune in the US Open at 40/1 (General 1/2 1,2)

The shortest off-season in memory is upon us and it doesn’t leave long to preview what lies ahead in 2024.

The new campaign gets under way on December 29 – will there be yet more dominance from Novak Djokovic, who surely sealed greatest of all time status during 2023?

Or is the young breed, led by Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz and also featuring the likes of Jannik Sinner and Holger Rune, finally ready to wrest control from the super Serb?

The purpose of this column is not necessarily to answer those questions, although both will be touched upon.

Instead, we’re looking for potential value in the men’s Grand Slam ante-post markets.

History shows it’s a pretty tough task but I’m up for the challenge!

I’ll be back with the equivalent women’s piece in the coming days, while there will also be a look at the best bets for the ATP and WTA seasons as a whole before Christmas.

Australian Open

• When: January 14-28
• Where: Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia
• TV: Eurosport

Coming so close to the start of the season – the third week in to be precise – it’s going to be difficult to find a player who will move significantly in the market.

So, essentially, we’re looking at the market as it is, thinking this is largely how they will go off on January 14 – remember it’s a Sunday start in 2024.

As ever, it’s pretty hard to look beyond Novak Djokovic given he’s won this title on 10 occasions. Boris Becker used to call Centre Court his backyard; Rod Laver Arena essentially belongs to the Serb.

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But for anyone looking to either take on Djokovic – or seek out some potential each-way value – let’s take a look further down the market.

There are some former members of the elite who have fallen away but could well bounce back in 2024.

Rafael Nadal is the most obvious and parallels will undoubtedly be drawn with Roger Federer, who famously won here in 2017 having spent the previous six months on the sidelines.

Yet Nadal has been out even longer and the hardcourts have never been his favoured domain. Frankly, 22/1 looks skinny.

Holger Rune and STEFANOS TSITSIPAS look better bets.

OK, neither has Nadal’s Slam-winning pedigree but both have shown in the past that they are capable of challenging for the sport’s biggest prizes.

I was certainly impressed with how Rune finished last season.

It would be too easy to remember his 2023 campaign for the post-Wimbledon slump which saw him struggle to win matches for months – one largely brought on by a back injury – but his impressive first half of the year should not be forgotten.

The signs in the last couple of months also suggested he’s going to be back up among the best players in the world in the coming season and, crucially, he’s made an excellent addition to his off-court team.

Boris Becker coached Djokovic to numerous Grand Slam titles and, of course, won six of them himself. He has that elite mentality from which the Dane is sure to learn – that currently looks a slight weakness in his game.

Aside from that, Rune has the tools to compete with the very best – he once again pushed Djokovic hard at the season-ending ATP Finals and also took the other finalist, Jannik Sinner, the distance.

As I write, Rune and Becker will doubtless be working on introducing a few new things and it would be no surprise to see him hit the ground running Down Under, so 40/1 has potential.

As for Tsitsipas, he’s another whose 2023 could well be remembered for the wrong reasons.

His relationship with WTA star Paula Badosa made more headlines than his tennis. That’s probably a sign of the times we live in but it’s also fair to say that one ATP 250 title in the season was a disappointing return for a player of the Greek’s quality.

Importantly, in terms of this particular market, Tsitsipas has a fine record at Melbourne Park.

In terms of wins and losses, he’s 21-6, including victories over both Federer and Nadal, while in the past five years, he’s finished runner-up once and made three other semi-finals.

Maybe the off-season will have refreshed Tsitsipas and helped him refocus on his career.

If that is the case, then he’s certainly got the ability to make odds of 50/1 look big in a few weeks’ time.

French Open

• When: May 26-June 9
• Where: Roland Garros, Paris, France
• TV: Eurosport

With Carlos Alcaraz the current favourite, it’s certainly not difficult to make a case for there being value in the prices of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal right now.

Djokovic won in Paris last season – his third success at Roland Garros – and once again heads into a new campaign as the world number one.

Nadal, meanwhile, is a 14-time winner of this event and, if his body has held up until May, then there must be a good chance that the ‘King of Clay’ is shorter than 6/1 come the first ball.

Of course, as the man himself admits, that’s a big ‘if’ and I’m not massively keen on backing someone whose fitness is so open to question.

Of those further down the betting, CASPER RUUD looks the one with serious potential.

The Norwegian is most at home on the clay and has made the last two Roland Garros finals, losing to Nadal in 2022 and Djokovic in 2023.

Last season saw Ruud slip back from his 2022 heights but he still managed to reach a major final on his favourite surface and I’d expect him to be a contender on clay come the spring.

He’ll likely look to hone his game on the claycourts of South America in February and I can see his current odds of 30/1 shortening considerably should he tick off a couple of titles there.

Sadly, though, there is no each-way option at that price.

For a rank outsider, you could try Francisco Cerundolo.

The Argentine is probably South America’s best claycourter and he produced a number of eyecatching wins on the surface in 2023.

Top-10 stars Jannik Sinner, Casper Ruud and Taylor Fritz were all defeated, while he was just a tie-break away from beating Holger Rune at Roland Garros. Andrey Rublev was another who beat Cerundolo in a final set.

I’d rate Cerundolo in the top 10 on clay and if he can make some subtle improvements as 2024 progresses, then he could make a mockery of odds of 200/1.

Wimbledon

• When: July 1-14
• Where: All England Club, Wimbledon, London, England, UK
• TV: BBC

There’s been plenty of talk over the past decade or so about how the Wimbledon grass has slowed down.

However, it’s a myth that the big servers have lost their advantage.

A 135mph serve remains a massive weapon on a surface which sees the ball skid through fairly low, causing problems for the receiver.

You only have to look at the list of recent finalists to see this – Milos Ranoic (2016), Marin Cilic (2017), Kevin Anderson (2018), MATTEO BERRETTINI (2021), Nick Kyrgios (2022).

Of those, only Cilic and Anderson have made Grand Slam finals on other surfaces where their big shot doesn’t get quite the same cut-through.

The players that pique the interest in this market are, unsurprisingly, cut from the same cloth; in the first case it’s cloth reused.

Berrettini’s record on grass is excellent. He’s 36-8 on the surface at tour level, winning four titles in the process, as well as reaching that Wimbledon final in which he won the opening set against Djokovic before losing in four.

It’s also easy to forget he was 9-0 heading into Wimbledon 2022 where he tested positive for Covid-19 on the morning of his first-round match.

Even during his injury-hit 2023 campaign when he had little match preparation, Berrettini beat Lorenzo Sonego, Alex de Minaur and Alex Zverev en route to the last 16 where he actually took the first set off eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz.

In short, Berrettini has to go off shorter than 33/1 if he’s fit.

This isn’t Nadal’s ailing body we’re dealing with here and the Italian has several months to play himself into form so this looks a price worth taking.

Hubert Hurkacz, a 66/1 shot, is another to consider.

He’s a former champion on the grass of Halle and showed last season how capable he is in quick conditions, winning the Shanghai Masters (a 40/1 success for this column!) and making the semis in Cincinnati where he missed match point against Carlos Alcaraz.

Admittedly, a 10-5 record in SW19 isn’t the greatest but in mitigation he’s twice run into Novak Djokovic and did make the last four in 2021.

There could be some juice in the Pole’s price.

US Open

• When: August 26-September 8
• Where: Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York, USA
• TV: Sky Sports

Still more than eight months away, this is the market which has the greatest potential for a shake-up.

There will be a few movers and shakers here with those who enjoy a strong first half of the season likely to shorten up a fair bit, especially if they perform well on the hardcourts of Indian Wells and Miami in the spring.

The aforementioned HOLGER RUNE again has potential.

As at the Australian Open, the Dane is a 40/1 shot but I’m not sure those two quotes really compute.

Rune looks to be a player with a high ceiling and the appointment of Becker gives him a greater opportunity to reach that height.

We already know he’s capable of more than he’s produced in recent months – Rune will start the new season ranked eighth but he’s been as high as fourth in the past and is a former Masters 1000 champion.

Still only 20, Rune is being talked about as one of the next ‘Big Three’, alongside Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, and while he’s not yet reached the same levels those two have, he’s certainly not too far behind Sinner.

Yet the Italian is currently 14/1 for the US Open and Rune almost three times that price.

That’s not to say Sinner is bad value – the way he ended 2023 suggests he could make those odds look big come late summer – but I think Rune is the one here who really has the potential to shorten up.

I would not be surprised to see him go off more than half those odds so, in the here and now, he looks the US Open bet to me.

Posted at 2140 GMT on 08/12/23

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