Alexander Zverev is finally a Grand Slam champion at long last. The German nearly-man kept his cool while everything was falling apart around him to win the 2026 French Open after a gutsy five-set victory over Italian upstart Flavio Cobolli in Paris. Now, he leaves the memory of those three painful near-misses in Slam finals from yesteryear to finally take his place in the history books.
While he was sitting next to the Coupe des Mousquetaires in his dressing room, somewhat in disbelief, somewhere in Paris, the man who arrived as a -300 favourite and world number one was presumably watching a replay he didn’t want to watch. That, of course, is Jannik Sinner, who capitulated in the third round against Juan Manuel Cerundolo, throwing away a two-set – and 5-1 up in the third – lead away to somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Novak Djokovic wasn’t far behind him, bowing out the very next day after an upset loss to teenage sensation Joao Fonseca. Carlos Alcaraz, meanwhile, didn’t even start his famous three-peat attempt, withdrawing the week before the tournament with a wrist injury that will also see him miss Wimbledon. So, what has all of that, and Zverev’s emotional triumph, done to the betting odds ahead of next month’s Wimbledon Championships? Let’s take a look.
Jannik Sinner — 11/25
Jannik Sinner had won his previous 30 matches heading into that third-round clash with Cerundolo. He led 5-1 in the third set against a player who had never come close to beating anyone near his level. Then a dehydration timeout at 5-4 broke something inside him, and the match shifted. The Argentinian underdog then won fifteen consecutive points, took the set, and then the fourth and fifth without resistance, completing a 3-6, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1, 6-1 victory that stands as one of the most extraordinary collapses in recent Grand Slam history.
But here’s the tennis logic that matters: not one point of what went wrong in Paris transfers to SW19. Clay rewards Sinner’s ability to build rallies from the baseline, to absorb pace and redirect it with heavy topspin — but it also tolerates the kind of physical deterioration that unravelled him against Cerundolo. Wimbledon grass doesn’t give rallies time to develop that way. Sinner’s game on that surface is about something more immediate: a flat, aggressive return of serve, the ability to take the ball early off low bounces, transitions from defence to attack compressed into two or three shots. It’s the version of his game that destroyed Djokovic’s six-consecutive-finals streak in the 2025 semifinals, and then took apart defending champion Alcaraz — the man who had won the previous two Wimbledons — 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in the final.
Online betting sites know it, and they have shown no hesitation in installing him as the frontrunner once again. The popular 5Gringos online sportsbook makes Sinner the overwhelming 11/25 favourite to defend his Wimbledon title, even after that dramatic collapse in Paris. At 24, he’s the most complete hard-court and grass-court player alive, and the bookies know it.
Novak Djokovic — 7/2
A 19-year-old Brazilian who had never beaten a top-ten player arrived on Philippe-Chatrier and became the first teenager to defeat Djokovic at a Grand Slam — in a match Djokovic had seemingly already won when he was cruising at two sets up. Instead, he was on the receiving end of his earliest Roland Garros exit since 2009. And then, before the post-match press conference dust had settled, the familiar question: is this the beginning of the end?
It always is, and it never quite is.
Seven Wimbledon titles. Forty-two wins from his last 44 matches at the All England Club — a cathedral he has made his own more completely than any player since Borg. The 2025 run ended in the semifinals against Sinner, yes, but even the defeat felt like an argument for his quality, rather than against it. He just turned 39, but that didn’t stop him from ending Sinner’s Australian Open reign with a five-set semifinal before losing to Alcaraz in the final. Is that the form of a man in decline?
But there is a question worth sitting with. He needs one more Wimbledon to equal Federer’s record of eight. And every year that passes, the body has to be asked to do something it finds slightly harder than the year before — seven best-of-five matches across a fortnight, on knees that have been operated on, against opponents who were schoolchildren when he first won here. The 7/2 is priced for that tension precisely. The pedigree says he can win it. The arithmetic says he might be running out of chances.
Alexander Zverev — 8/1
Zverev might have just won in Paris, but his Wimbledon leaves a lot to be desired. The career-best result is the fourth round — 2017, 2021, 2024. In 2025, he lost in the first round to Arthur Rinderknech, his earliest Grand Slam exit since 2019, on the sport’s most prestigious stage. Career win rate at the All England Club: 64 percent. It’s not the number of a man for whom grass is hostile territory, exactly, but it’s not the number of a champion either.
The surface argument against him is specific, rather than vague. Zverev builds his best tennis around heavy topspin, and the time clay affords him to load up on groundstrokes. On grass, the ball skids through low, and the time compresses — and suddenly, his loop backswing becomes a liability, rather than an asset. Opponents who serve-and-volley force him into improvised half-volleys and reflex exchanges that aren’t his game. He’s 64 percent at Wimbledon because the surface regularly asks him questions his toolkit wasn’t built to answer.
Is there a more psychologically significant form of momentum in tennis than finally landing a first Grand Slam — and does that confidence carry from clay to grass? The honest answer is that nobody knows. But Zverev’s serve — genuinely world-class when it’s functioning — is a weapon that plays on any surface, and a man who no longer carries the suffocating weight of the unfinished Grand Slam record might just trust it more in the tiebreaks that settle grass-court matches. At 8/1, he’s the most genuinely uncertain price on the board. Not value in the classic sense, but not wrong either.
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