tennis | Thursday, July 7, 2022 4:58 PM (Revised at: Friday, July 8, 2022 12:31 PM)

Friday's ATP Tennis Best Bet: Wimbledon, July 8th

Jon Reid

ATP Wimbledon BEST BET: KYRGIOS vs NADAL

Friday, July 8th, 15:30 UK Time

The men’s semifinals are set at Wimbledon and there is a feel-good story to tell about all four men. From the stakes in the overall grand slam title race with both Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal alive in the draw to Cameron Norrie playing on home soil still standing, there is plenty to chew on heading into Friday’s matches.

For our selection from the men’s semifinals, we’ll focus on the match featuring Nadal and one of tennis’ most controversial figures in Nick Kyrgios.

With the markets opening this one up as a 50-50 contest, money came pouring in on Kyrgios after injury concerns regarding Nadal’s abdominal area came to the forefront of his five-set comeback win against Taylor Fritz.

Now sitting over 2.40, there appears to be some value on the Spanish legend for a few reasons.

First, the severity of his injury comes with a few questions. Not only was Nadal’s play from the baseline barely impacted as the match wore on, but after seeing dramatic reductions in his service speeds for the second and third sets, we saw him get right back up to the 117 miles per hour range by the final set.

Either Nadal has figured out a way to serve that doesn’t affect his injury much, or it’s not nearly as serious as the market believes it is.

Secondly, his game matches up well with Kyrgios. His elite returning ability and penchant for getting an incredible number of serves into play (even against the likes of the bigger servers on tour) should help him put pressure on one of the most elite servers in the game, while his ability on serve on grass over the last several years has been better than many may believe (his service hold rate was over 90% in each of the previous three grass seasons he played).

While I’m going to keep my stakes very low on this one, I think the market has gone too far in opposing Nadal. If you have a book with a price over 2.40 that voids upon retirement, I’d suggest placing the wager there.