The ATP Finals are the climax of the tennis year. The best male players in the world gather for a final shoot-out to claim the last major prize on the calendar. Known as the fifth Grand Slam, the ATP Finals offer a fabulous range of betting opportunities for tennis fans.
Only the very best players qualify for the ATP Finals. An elite field of eight is selected by their overall performance over the previous 12 months.
There are just two prizes on offer, for men’s singles and doubles, but the quality of the field means they are not easy to win.
Players are split into two groups of four and meet on a round-robin basis before knock-out play in the semifinals and final.
Played on indoor hard courts, the event has been staged at the Pala Alpitour in Turin, Italy since 2021, and it is due to remain there until 2025 at least. Previous host cities include London, Shanghai and Houston.
The ATP Tour Finals lineup is not decided until very late in the season - © Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
When it comes to ATP Finals betting, the most important consideration is usually to be patient. The line-up of the top eight in both the singles and doubles competitions is not decided until very late in the season.
As a result, it is worth waiting to see who is in the field before investing. Although it must be said that if we are sure a player will qualify and we believe he will go all the way, we should get very generous odds for our future bet!
ATP Finals betting sites are sure to attract customers with a range of offers and promotions related to the tournament.
It is always best to use a sportsbook with a good reputation and a website or app that allows us to navigate between markets and bet smoothly and quickly.
Look for good value on special offers too, such as free bets or boosted returns on single or parlay wagers.
The ATP Finals are contested every year between the top eight qualified players on the circuit, with a round-robin stage followed by knockout semi-finals and finals. With such a format, one may expect the powerhouses of tennis to dominate each edition of the tournament.
However, over the last six years, there has been a turn of the tide. The 'big three' of Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have not won a single title. In fact, during that time, only Djokovic has managed to reach a final (which he lost in 2018). Over that period, Alexander Zverev has taken home two trophies. The man he defeated in the 2021 final, Daniil Medvedev, has also been victorious. Stefanos Tsitsipas and Grigor Dimitrov are the two other players to etch their name on the trophy since Andy Murray’s victorious run in 2016.
It is a tournament which holds prestige, but it is also an open one. All who qualify have a realistic chance of winning the trophy.
This is demonstrated by the fact that three of the past five winners won the tournament before capturing a Grand Slam (Dimitrov, Tsitsipas and Zverev).
ATP Finals betting sites often list the bigger names as favourites, despite outsiders regularly coming out on top at this tournament. There is excellent value in the ATP Finals betting market, where studying players’ form and the history of matchups can really pay off.
Last year, Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut became the first all-French team to win the tournament more than once. They are a long way off passing the record United States’ legends, Peter Fleming and John McEnroe, who won the doubles tournament on seven different occasions.
Fellow two-time champions Henri Kontinen and John Peers didn’t qualify for the 2021 tournament, but hold an impressive overall record of nine wins and just two losses at the ATP Finals.
Another pair who are always dangerous on the doubles circuit are Wesley Koolhof and Nikola Mektić. The pair were victorious in 2020 tournament and will have high hopes of repeating that success at the 2022 edition.
In 2021, they were knocked out in the semis by runners-up, Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury. The American, Ram, and the Brit, Salisbury, made it to the semis in 2020 and the final in 2021. They will be aiming to go one better and bring home the title in 2022.
When it comes to the doubles event, you can get excellent markets on ATP Finals betting online, not just for the event, but also for which teams will qualify.
This year, the ATP Finals return to the Pala Alpitour stadium in Turin, Italy. The tournament is in its second year of a five-year run there, after being held in London at the O2 Arena from 2009 to 2020.
Last year’s event, the first in the city, saw a 60% capacity crowd due to COVID-19 restrictions, with around 7,500 spectators in the stands. The reduced audience did not hamper the atmosphere, which eventual winner Alexander Zverev described as the “loudest… most energetic crowd” he has experienced.
Turin is the 15th city to hold the event after it was first held in Tokyo in 1970.
Alexander Zverev won his second ATP Finals title at the 2021 tournament.
The German didn’t have an easy run to the gold, overcoming world No.1 Novak Djokovic in the semis, while also losing to eventual finalist Daniil Medvedev in round-robin play.
He became only the fourth player in ATP Finals’ history to defeat the two top-ranked players in the world in the final and semi-final of the event.
Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut took home their second ATP Finals title in 2021. The all-French team became just the eighth pair to win the tournament on more than one occasion.
They had to overcome Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury in the final, a pairing whom they had previously lost to in the group stage of the event.
Rising Russian star Daniil Medvedev won the singles title in 2020 convincingly. In only his second appearance in the ATP Finals, he didn’t lose a single match. He beat Novak Djokovic in the round robin and Rafael Nadal in the semi-final before defeating Dominic Thiem in three sets in the final to claim the crown.
Wesley Koolhof, from the Netherlands, and Croatia’s Nikola Mektić teamed up to win the trophy for the first time. Both men are specialists in doubles play and they defeated Austrian Jürgen Melzer and Édouard Roger-Vasselin of France in a three-set final to take the title.
Even when play has begun, you can still take advantage of ATP Finals odds. Tennis, with its frequent breaks, is a sport that is well-suited to in-play betting.
And sportsbooks of the modern era have embraced digital technology and can now update their odds almost instantly. This means that visitors to ATP Finals betting sites can wager on a huge variety of markets even after the action has started.
For instance, if a player loses his first set, we will still be able to wager on him to win that match - at considerably better odds than he would have been before the match started.
Images: © Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports, © Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports, © Peter van den Berg-USA TODAY Sports, © Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports, © Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports, © Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Sports, © Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports
