Tennis Betting Strategies: Ace Your Game with Winning Bets

Surface specialization is a key strategy in tennis betting where you analyze players’ performance on different court surfaces (such as grass, clay, and hard courts) and place bets accordingly.

Here’s how you can use surface specialization in tennis betting:

1. Understand Player Performance on Different Surfaces: Some players perform exceptionally well on specific surfaces due to their playing style, strengths, or preferences. For example, Rafael Nadal is known for his dominance on clay courts due to his topspin-heavy game, while Roger Federer has historically performed better on grass and hard courts.
2. Research Historical Performance: Analyze players’ historical performance on different surfaces. Look at their win-loss records, titles won, and performance against different opponents on each surface. This can give you insights into their comfort level and effectiveness on specific courts.
3. Look for Value Bets: Surface specialization can sometimes create opportunities for value bets, especially when a player is underrated or overrated on a particular surface. If you believe a player’s performance on a certain surface is being underestimated by bookmakers, it could present a profitable betting opportunity.
4. Monitor Form and Fitness: While surface specialization is important, it’s also essential to consider players’ current form and fitness levels. A player who historically performs well on a certain surface may struggle if they’re out of form or dealing with injuries.
5. Consider External Factors: Factors like weather conditions, court speed, and altitude can also influence players’ performance on different surfaces. For example, high altitude can enhance the speed of the ball, favoring big servers on hard courts.

There are of course obvious examples of surface specialists like Nadal on clay or Federer on grass, but everyone knows about them so there did not tend to be much value in backing them on those surfaces.

It can be more beneficial to search for players who are lesser known to casual bettors but have particularly notable records on certain surfaces. 

On the Tennis Live website, you can search for players and then sort their record by surface to see where they perform best.

It can also be worth paying attention for early signs that a player could be suited to a particular surface before mainstream fans have caught on. 

For example, at Wimbledon 2023, few experts gave Carlos Alcaraz a chance at the start of the event as it was only his fourth ever tournament on grass. He was priced at around 5/1, well behind tournament favourite Novak Djokovic. 

However, Alcaraz had shown very quick adaptability to grass courts, having had a good run to the fourth round of Wimbledon the year before and then winning the Queens tournament just before the 2023 edition of Wimbledon. 

Alcaraz’s all-court game turned out to be well suited to grass, with his heavy serve and ground strokes being complemented by imagination and touch shots that bamboozled his opponents. 

Those who were paying close attention could have seen this and profited from it.

So watching closely for signs of players that may have a suitability for particular surfaces before other bettors notice can pay dividends. 

Strategy Three: Taking Advantage of the “Sharp” bookmakers

A different approach to studying form, head-to-head records, surface specialisation and the like is to focus on movement in the odds and use that to our potential advantage. 

One bookie that is known to produce particularly accurate odds is Pinnacle. They are known to have some of the most accurate odds in the business. 

They and similar bookies are often known as “hard” or “sharp” bookmakers.

Many of these bookies are based in Asia and have much higher limits on how much money can be placed on a tennis match than European bookies. 

This means that they attract a lot of professional money, with big players and betting syndicates placing their bets down as they can get much bigger stakes on than with the bookies we are more familiar with over here in Europe.

At the same time, the weight of this money means that they are much more accurate in predicting the “true odds” of an event, as they are sensitive to all the information that professional operations may be privy to such as player fitness, local conditions and the like. 

Traditional “soft” bookies tend to be slower in reacting to news and as they have much stricter limits on how much money can be placed, don’t attract as much professional money. 

So in essence what we can do as punters is exploit the difference in odds between these “sharp” and “soft” bookies. 

When the sharp bookies cut their odds on a player, but the soft books don’t, that is our chance to grab a value bet and place a bet with the soft bookies. 

There are tools such as Trademate Sports that monitor the markets on sharp and soft bookies and then alert you when such an opportunity is found. 

Here’s the concept explained by Trademate Sports themselves: 

You can use these tools in other sports aswell, but tennis is particularly suited given the liquidity of markets, the frequency of matches and the binary outcome (just two players in a match). 

As with many of these methods such as matched betting, value betting and the like, doing this kind of betting may eventually get your bookie accounts limited. 

However, there are many available bookie accounts to do this with and there may even be occasions when you can use the exchanges to exploit differentials in the odds. 

So this represents a viable option for those who don’t wish to spend a lot of time studying form and playing styles but instead rely on clues from the markets. 

Strategy Four: Betting on Sets

An alternative approach to focusing just on the win market is to look instead at the side markets in tennis matches. 

One of these in particular is set betting. 

There are various set markets you typically see for a tennis match. These include: 

• Set 1 winner
• Set 2 winner
• Set betting
• Number of sets

A strategy for these markets is to look at a player’s match history and see how their matches tend to pan out. 

Some players have a tendency to win a lot of matches easily, steamrolling their opponents in straight sets. 

For these players, backing them in 2-0 in the “set betting” market (or 3-0 in a grand slam match) could be a smart option. 

Alternatively, if they tend to be fast out the blocks, backing them in the “Set 1 winner” market could be the way forward. 

Other players tend to win matches the hard way, often going the distance. One prime example of this over the years is Andy Murray, who would famously be involved in many long matches – particularly at the grand slams where he would often go five sets.  

Backing Murray in the “number of sets” could be the option here – 3 sets in regular tournaments or 5 sets in a grand slam. 

Then there are players who have a particular strength when a match goes to a deciding set. Nadal would be a famous example of this, as he normally relished a match going into a fifth set when his superior fitness, stamina and mental strength could shine through. 

You could therefore back Nadal in a match when it came down to a final set in such circumstances (the match odds would be used here as it is in effect the same as the final set winner).

On the flip side, there are players who tend to wilt under pressure and often give up leads in matches, particularly on big occasions. 

You could therefore lay such players going into a final set, or even lay them when they are ahead in a match against a player who has a history of making comebacks. 

The point about the set markets is that they tend to be derived from the match odds, rather than from the individual playing styles and histories of the players. 

So value can be found by focusing on the nuances of certain players and betting in the set markets to take advantage of your knowledge and research of these players. 

Strategy Five: Backing Players Outright in their Favourite Events

The strategies we have discussed so far are all for individual matches. However, there is another type of tennis bet that is worth considering – the tournament outright bet.

This can pay large dividends if your pre-tournament pick goes all the way and wins the title.

One way to approach the outright markets is to consider players who are playing in one of their favourite events.

Year after year the same players tend to do well in certain tournaments – the old phrase “horses for courses” applies to tennis as well as horse racing.

There are certain records that are well known, like Rafael Nadal’s incredible 14 French Open titles.

Even though Nadal’s supreme dominance at Roland Garros was well established, backing him every year between 2005 and 2022 would have yielded substantial profit, despite him starting the event at short odds on many occasions.

Quite simply the high strike rate of wins combined with some of them being at odds-against would have yielded strong gains.

Similarly for Djokovic’s 10 Australian Open titles between 2008 and 2023. The Serb also has very strong records at a number of other events, including 7 Paris Masters titles and 7 ATP Tour Finals titles.

Roger Federer had a similar penchant for winning certain events, with 9 wins apiece at Halle and Basel and 8 wins apiece at Wimbledon and in Dubai.

Much of this can be down to the surface again, but it can also be a liking for the atmosphere and setup around a tournament and its host city.

Although it is very early in his career, Carlos Alcaraz has shown a particular liking for Indian Wells Masters and Madrid Open within two wins already at both tournaments.

Quite often though the odds won’t necessarily take such preferences as much into account as they should, particularly outside of grand slams where records are not as well known by the casual punter.

It can also be worth focusing on lesser players who might not win a tournament very often, but regularly do well there, getting to the latter stages.

Those players could be backed each-way or as a back-to-lay trade, to be cashed out at the quarter- or semi-final stage for example.