In the span of one week, the sporting world watched as Jannik Sinner and Scottie Scheffler captured their second major respective titles of 2025, marking the fourth of their respective careers.
Sinner, the World No. 1 in men’s tennis, dispatched Carlos Alcaraz in the final at Wimbledon, while golf’s top man, Scheffler, ran away from the field at Royal Portrush to lift the Claret Jug for the first time.
The two results were anything but surprising.
Scheffler has won two of the last three majors, and he has teed off as the betting favorite in each of the previous 12, with three wins and ten top-10 finishes in that span.
His average pre-tournament odds for the last eight majors are roughly +450, which equates to 18.8 percent implied probability.
That is absurdly high in golf terms, but for Scheffler, it may be a discount considering he won 37.5 percent of the majors in that span.
It’s as if we’re right back in the middle of the aughts, with prime Tiger Woods on the prowl.
Men’s tennis is in a similarly nostalgic spot.
Sinner was the second choice at Wimbledon, but the margin separating him and Carlos Alcaraz was minute. They were essentially co-favorites, as they were at the French Open a few weeks prior.
Alcaraz defeated Sinner in a five-set thriller at Roland Garros.
Sinner and Alcaraz have now combined to win the last seven Grand Slam titles, and they have nine of the last 12 between them. The only other player to win a major trophy in that span is Novak Djokovic, who is coming up on the second anniversary of his last one, the 2023 US Open.
For much of the aughts and 2010s, men’s tennis was dominated by a big three – Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer – who combined to win 66 Grand Slam titles between 2003-23.
Only nine other players won a Grand Slam title between Federer’s maiden major (Wimbledon, 2003) and Alcaraz’s first at the 2022 US Open.
In the 12 Slams leading up to Federer’s initial triumph, there were nine different champions. That seems a foreign concept these days.
When Federer and Nadal stepped aside, it was supposed to open things up and add some unpredictability to Grand Slam tennis.
Instead, there was a succession plan already in place. Alcaraz and Sinner were waiting in the wings, only this time, the Big 3 has been whittled down to a Dominant Duo.
Sinner is currently +120 to win the US Open, while Alcaraz is right behind him at +180 odds. That equates to roughly an 81.2 percent chance that one of them will lift the trophy in Flushing.
With some back-of-the-napkin math and not accounting for the vig, you should get +432 odds (18.8 percent) to bet the field against Sinner and Alcaraz next month.
It’s not a straight line between Grand Slam tennis to major championship golf – in the former, it’s mono y mono, while the latter pits you against an entire field – but you can throw one umbrella over the two of them when it comes to handicapping.
These are elite fields, pitting the best players in the world against one another, and that should be a recipe for chaos, which in turn makes for terrific betting. There’s a reason why the Kentucky Derby is beloved.
But instead, the slams and the majors have become entirely predictable — and dare I say unenjoyable — for the average punter who doesn’t want to throw down heaps of scratch on short favorites in the biggest events of the year.
The glass-half-full bettor would saythe short prices on Sinner, Alcaraz and Scheffler allow you to get some terrific numbers on legitimate contenders, but the problem with that logic is that not only do you need to beat the Goliaths, but you also have to identify the right David.
And perhaps the most daunting part of all of this is the fact that the average age of Alcaraz, Sinner and Scheffler is just north of 24-and-a-half years old.
We are still in the beginning stages of this era, but history may provide a glimpse of what it could look like.
Back in 2006, Rafael Nadal was -125 to win the French Open. A few weeks later, Roger Federer was -200 to win Wimbledon. That same month, Tiger Woods was a +500 favorite to win the Open.
All three won.
Historical betting data provided by Sports Odds History.
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.