The five best websites to research Tennis bets

Looking for that extra edge over your fellow exchange users? Then, in this day and age, you need good information and, in particular, data.

We asked tennis betting expert Andy Schooler to tell us which sources he uses to decide on his best bets.

Tennis Abstract

A great database with its filters really elevating it to elite level. Career results from all levels of senior tennis are there with most having match stats too. Crucially, the site gives you cumulative statistics across a host of matches. That data set may be from a certain time period, on a particular surface, or at a specific event. The depth of statistics is particularly good. You can easily find a player’s service-hold (and break) percentage, which is something I often use, while there’s also info such as a player’s record against left/right-handers and how well they’ve done against players of a certain rank (ie top 20, top 50 etc). You can play with those filters for a long time – you’ll need to focus in on what you really want – but as a tennis data resource, this is a great site.

ATP Tour

The official tour websites have been much-criticised over the years but the ATP offering is pretty decent at present. Of course, there are live scores but my main use for it from a betting perspective is draws – both the present ones (you can easily print off PDFs – I find making notes on paper useful, although perhaps that’s showing my age!) and the historical ones, which help me with the ‘course form’ aspect which I recently mentioned in my piece on how I go about researching my bets. That can also be done on for specific players – head to a player profile, choose player activity and then you can filter their record at a particular tournament with the site throwing up all their previous results at that event. Click into each match for the in-depth stats such as the number of aces/double faults served, service percentages and break points created/converted. The site also has a ‘stats’ section which delivers certain data points across a career or particular season. This allows you to see who has the best record on a number of serve and return data points and can also be filtered by surface. The other area which I use often is the head-to-head search – find a H2H record of two players by simply adding names to the fields on site. Again, you can then look at the data of a specific match with an extra click.

WTA Tour

Offers some of the same things as the ATP site but, frankly, is a poorer relation. For example, while you can still do a head-to-head search and it will show the win-loss record and individual match results, you can’t look into the data from any of the specific matches. Its ‘stats hub’ is decent, showing data points like first-serve points won but it is let down but a lack of a ‘minimum matches’ filter – in every category you get a player who has played one tour-level match leaping to the fore. Still of use but can be frustrating.

Matchstat

I find this a great alternative for head-to-head records and is a site I often use when researching match bets. Notably, it offers the individual match stats for WTA searches which the official site doesn’t – that’s of great use when looking at specifics like aces and double faults, markets I often find the layers make mistakes in. Another reason to use it is that when you ask for a H2H record, you also get each player’s form shown on the same page, including comparison data from the current tournament.

TennisForm

Not so much a data site, rather than a news one with its ‘ticker’ service proving of great use to tennis punters. It provides brief match reports, injury updates and player quotes to inform its users. The info is garnered from a team of tennis specialists around the globe so it is constantly being updated. There’s also a historical search facility so you can look back at ‘old’ info. It is a subscription service though, so won’t be for everyone.