The first Grand Slam of the 2025 season gets underway in a month’s time, with the Australian Open starting in Melbourne on Sunday, 12 January.
Tennis bookmakers have released their betting markets, so let’s take a closer look at the early Australian Open odds to see which players are overrated and which players are underrated.
Jannik Sinner – Underrated @ 2.75 (+175)
We’re going to start off with a hot take, and that’s calling Jannik Sinner underrated, even though he leads the Australian Open betting odds.
Odds of 2.75 still just seem too long for the Italian. This thinking mostly stems from him being so incredibly good last year at the Australian Open, but also overall in the 2024 season.
He played 79 matches in 2024 and lost only six of them, and three of them were against Carlos Alcaraz. Considering that the Spaniard doesn’t really do well in Australia, or hasn’t done well so far, Sinner looks the overwhelming favorite to win.
With that in mind, his odds seem a bit long. In our opinion, he’s a bigger favorite than 2.75. We say there is about a 75% chance he wins this event if healthy, and that probability is more in line with odds of 1.30 to 1.40 – considerably lower than what the early Australian Open odds imply.
Carlos Alcaraz – Overrated @ 3.40 (+240)
Here’s another spicy take: Alcaraz is being overrated heading into the Australian Open. Alcaraz, for now, is the second favorite to win in Melbourne with odds of 3.40, which are too short for our liking.
The main reason the Spaniards odds are this short is simply because at times he looked like the only player who could beat Sinner. Out of the six losses the Italian had in 2024, half were against Alcaraz.
Out of the three losses Sinner had on hard courts, two were against Alcaraz, so logically the assumption is that if Sinner was going to be beaten by anybody in Melbourne, it’s very likely to be Alcaraz.
There is nothing faulty in that logic; but the trouble is, Alcaraz’s track record down under has been anything but good.
He played only 10 matches so far, has a record of 7-3 overall and has generally performed the worst there compared to the three other Grand Slams. It might be something with the conditions or simply the timing, but so far he hasn’t looked good and we think the odds should reflect that.
As of now they don’t, and while there is some logic behind it, we still believe that 3.40 is too short for the world No 3 heading into the Australian Open.
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Alex de Minaur – Underrated @ 51.00 (+5000)
Another player we think is undersold is the speed demon himself, Alex de Minaur. His Australian Open winner odds currently sit at 51.00, which seems far too high, for a couple of reasons.
First of all, he’s a native Aussie and that certainly matters. He will get heavy crowd backing from start to finish.
Secondly, he’s been a solid performer down under for years. Even before he transformed himself into a really great player, de Minaur always overperformed at home, whether it would be in the United Cup or any of the iterations before it, or simply at the Australian Open.
He’s made the fourth round a couple of times now, and while he hasn’t moved past that yet, we expect he will this year. He just had his career-best year with 52 wins and a 24-6 record on hard courts, reaching a career-high of No 6 in the world at one stage.
A hip injury at Wimbledon slowed things down a little in 2024, but he still made the ATP Finals. He also just played at UTS over the off-season, smashing the likes of Holger Rune to easily win the event, so he seems to be in a great spot and unbothered by the hip now.
There are only about five or six players who have a bigger chance than him to win the event, so with that in mind, his odds are far too high.
Alexei Popyrin – Underrated @ 151.00 (+15000)
Another player who is criminally underrated heading into 2025 is Alexei Popyrin. In the current Australian Open betting, his odds currently sit at 151.00, which in comparison are longer than those of Stan Wawrinka. With all due respect to the latter, Popyrin cannot have lower odds of winning the event than a 39-year-old who won just 10 matches in 2024.
Just the sheer fact that he’s a native player should push him up to at least the second tier of favorites or a dark horse who will surely find himself in the second week of the event. He’s a capable player who won an ATP 1000 trophy in 2024 and beat Novak Djokovic at the US Open.
Those things don’t happen in a vacuum, and he’s also had a tendency to overachieve down under, much like his fellow countrymen. With all that in mind, odds of 151.00 are far too long, and Popyrin certainly has better chances than that.
Even with a shaky conclusion to 2024 overall, the Australian is expected to at least make the second week of the event, and is a live chance of winning it.
Novak Djokovic – Overrated @ 4.00 (+300)
As absurd as it might sound, we’re going to declare Novak Djokovic overrated heading into this year’s Australian Open.
Sure, there’s heavy recency bias due to Djokovic spending much of 2024 battling some sort of internal demons or a lack of motivation, but these are real problems. They’ve been issues for a while and even a solid finish to the year doesn’t really prove much.
His only strong event last year was the Paris Olympics. We don’t doubt that he’ll find similar motivation for this year because he’s got something to prove, but there is a very strong argument to make that his best days are simply behind him.
If that’s the case, this year might be even rougher for him. The Australian Open courts play fast and they are punishing. There are a couple of players who could beat him comfortably in these conditions, and even his impossible record at the event so far doesn’t justify him being third-favorite in our opinion.
Sebastian Korda – Underrated @ 51.00 (+5000)
There is something about Australia and the Korda gene because his father won the event many years ago. His son Sebastian hasn’t won the event but he could because Korda, at his best, is a very difficult player to beat.
Very tall with a powerful serve and flat punishing strokes make him a perfect fit for a court like this. If he can find his best tennis, he can certainly do some damage. His current odds are currently at 51.00, which seems a bit too high considering that he’s likely a player who will make the second week.
He always does well at the start of the season and smashing Daniil Medvedev as he did here previously shows us that he can play against anybody.
Nick Kyrgios – Overrated @ 41.00 (+4000)
We’ll finish with another Aussie, Nick Kyrgios, but unlike his compatriots, we don’t think he’ll do much here. That could be us being naive, but the fact remains that Kyrgios hasn’t played competitive tennis in two years and that’s not something you come back from with ease.
Even legendary players with historic work ethic like Novak Djokovic have struggled in the past after long layoffs. It wasn’t a layoff here, it was an injury that kept him away from the courts for two years. It’s also a wrist injury which required novel methods to fix, so there is a lot of unknown here.
His AO winner odds currently sit at 41.00, which are too short given how long he’s been away from the game. Winning seven best-of-five matches in a row is no mean feat.
There is a universe out there where Kyrgios comes back and sets the Tour on fire because he truly can do that, but with everything that we mentioned above, it looks very unrealistic, especially for what will be his second or third event back.
Watch how he performs at the World Tennis League in Abu Dhabi in about 10 days’ time. That should give everybody a better idea – don’t be surprised if these odds change quite a bit after that.
