Jannik Sinner Survived His First Round. Is the Wimbledon Favorite Vulnerable?

Jannik Sinner is the undisputed No. 1 player in professional tennis this year. With chief rival Carlos Alcaraz recovering from a wrist injury, Sinner has utterly dominated men’s tennis, winning all five ATP 1000 titles so far.

But cracks of fatigue finally started to show at Roland Garros, where Sinner was shockingly upset in the second round by Juan Manuel Cerundolo. Sinner doesn’t play well in the heat, and a long, volley-heavy clay match in mid-day Paris ultimately got the better of him.

Sinner is the defending Wimbledon champion, and BetMGM’s tennis odds reflect his dominant status. With Alcaraz gone, there is no obvious challenger who can match Sinner when he’s playing his best tennis. That’s why Sinner entered his first-round match as an odds-on favorite to win a fifth Slam title.

But Sinner looked quite mortal in a first-round tune-up against Miomir Kecmanovic – a respectable tour veteran but a lousy grass player. The fact that Kecmanovic pushed Sinner to five sets is yet another potential warning sign that Sinner is vulnerable.

Sinner hasn’t played since the French Open, so this could just be rust. Imagine you play the tour every week for several months, then don’t play at all for a whole month. Your first match could get a little sloppy. And that’s before you even account for the court surface change!

But the other explanation is that Sinner has gotten some combination of hurt, complacent, and fatigued over the course of the spring. He doesn’t have Alcaraz as a worthy challenger to push him. He’s made history by completing the second-ever Career Golden Masters, and he’s already won three of the four Slams. 

It’s not hard to imagine a player in this circumstance losing focus after a 30-match winning streak.

If Sinner returns to the court and decimates his next few opponents, he could cruise to a second Wimbledon title, and all this will be forgotten. But if he is vulnerable right now, the Wimbledon men’s odds market is incredibly skewed. Sinner is currently -145, and the second player in the table is 39-year-old Novak Djokovic. 

In other words, there is a lot of opportunity to bet the top midrange contenders and get incredible closing line value in the event of a Sinner upset. If there’s a name you like in the field, it’s probably worth holding that position to account for bad Sinner outcomes.