Online Sports Betting- How to Bet On Tennis Tournaments

Professional tennis may not be one of the biggest betting sports as compared to football and basketball. However, given the actual dynamics of a typical weekly tournament, this sport offers quite a bit of betting value considering the various betting options on the board at online sportsbooks such as HRWager.

One of the most important aspect of any tennis tournament is the playing court’s surface. Competition can take place on clay, grass and a hard court surface. Another important aspect is the level of play. Are you betting the US Open with the game’s best players or a secondary event that may be thinner as far as the depth of the field.

Betting on Players to Win

Betting on a particular player to win the entire tournament is the easiest and most popular way to bet on tennis. Unfortunately, this can also be the toughest bet to win. If nine of world’s Top 10 men or women players are in the field, that degree of difficulty actually increases.

Betting on the outright winner comes down to current form and past success in that particular event. A player at the top of their game in an event they have won in the past is the best combination for this type of bet.

Betting on Head-to-Head Matchups

Most of the action the online books take in on tennis centers on each rounds head-to-head matchups. With the use of moneyline odds for the favorite and the underdog, you can wager on one player pitted against another in a match.

Betting favorites in a tennis match comes at a higher risk than other moneyline bets. If you are betting on Novak Djokovic against an unranked player in one of the early rounds, his moneyline odds will be extremely high. If he is facing Rafael Nadal in the finals, the odds could go either way with very little difference between the two.

Most online books will handicap these head-to-head matchups with an added spread in sets. This equates to the run line in baseball or the puck line in hockey. The spread in the typical best-of-five set for men’s tennis might be 1 ½ sets. The favorite would need to sweep that match or win in four sets (3-1) to cover.

Betting head-to-head matchups can be extended to total games played with a handicap. The spread in games is added to the underdog’s total games won at the end of a match. Whichever player has the most games won with the spread included wins the bet.

Betting on Total Games

There is also a total line for head-to-head matches in tennis. The book sets the betting line for total games played and you can bet the OVER/UNDER accordingly. You may be able to find an OVER/UNDER betting line for total sets played as well.

Betting on Prop Options

As with any betting sport, online books love to post special prop bet options to add even more excitement to the betting board. These betting options can be as basic as which player wins the first set in a particular match.

Tennis props can also cover the tournament as a whole with options for the nationality of the winner, how far a certain player advances and anything else covering an aspect of this event.

If you are new to betting tennis, one strategy would be to compare the tennis betting board across a number of different online books. This can give you a good idea of the type of betting options each one offers.