Wimbledon Odds and Betting Picks
by Frank Doyle of Sports Interaction - 6/22/2011
Wimbledon has already started, but there’s very little of interest for someone who doesn’t avidly follow the sport closely in the first week’s games. A sharpie tennis bettor can spot a good bet in the early rounds but it’s very hard for casual tennis fans to make money in games like Roger Federer’s first round game, where the great man is a -10,000 favorite here at Sports Interaction.
You only make one cent on the dollar if Fed wins, and you lose everything if you bet on the other guy because he’s going to lose. Federer could still beat 90% of tennis players in the world with a hockey stick instead of a racquet. Some of them in straight sets.
Wimbledon will really get interesting next week, when the wheat separates for the chaff. The big four of men’s tennis are the ante post favorites – Nadal and Federer, with the last eight Championships between them, are +200, Djokovic is +300 and Andy Murray is +550. Those prices will shorten as the matches are played, but the order is unlikely to change, unless one of the Big Four suffers a terrible accident out on Wimbledon’s notorious Number 2 court.
In theory, Djokovic is the weakest grass player of the four, but he’s never played on grass to the level that he’s been playing all year. He’s never played anywhere to the level he’s playing this year. This ain’t your daddy’s Djokovic.
Murray is the most vulnerable of the four, as grass is not his natural surface and he also suffers from the crushing weight of local expectation and need for the first British winner at Wimbledon since Virginia Wade won the ladies’ in the hot summer of 1977.
In the past ten years, Goran Ivanisovic won without being seeded first, and Federer himself won his first Wimbledon as four seed eight years ago. But that was then and this is now and it’s impossible to look past Nadal or Federer. Theirs is now the great rivalry in individual sports, each a Butch to the other’s Sundance.
As for which of them will win it, Federer played better than he has in years at Roland Garros on his least favorite surface, and the draw means he plays the survivor of Nadal/Djokovic. Federer gets the vote.