Andy Schooler has 25/1 and 33/1 shots for this week’s ATP Rolex Paris Masters.
Tennis betting tips: ATP Rolex Paris Masters
1pt e.w. Rafael Jodar at 25/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes)
1pt e.w. Tommy Paul at 33/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes, Betfred)
Rolex Paris Masters
- Paris, France (indoor hard)
The perils of tennis betting during the indoor season have been very much in evidence in recent weeks.
With temporary courts being laid in multi-purpose arenas, organisers are able to pick and choose court speed and their approach often seems to lack consistency, while transparency is also an issue.
Paris is a perfect example. In 2024, court speed was among the highest on the ATP Tour but, having moved to a new home at La Defense last year, conditions were deliberately slowed with tournament director Cedric Pioline saying the GreenSet courts had been “too fast” in 2024.
Needless to say, several players duly came out and lambasted conditions – Alexander Bublik went as far to say he’d never played on an indoor court as slow.
Frankly, it’s difficult to know what we’re going to be dealing with this week – the opening day of qualifying hasn’t given a clear picture. Small data samples are hard to rely on, any way.
The obvious answer for outright punters is to wait and see what happens across the first round, in which the top eight seeds have byes.
However, this column doesn’t get that opportunity so I’ll push on, albeit punching in the dark a little.
My best guess is we’ll see something between last year’s pudding courts and the ice-like 2024 ones.
What we do know is the state of play in the Race to Turin – four spots in the season-ending ATP Finals field remain up for grabs.
The favourites here don’t have to worry about that – Alex Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz booked their berths some time ago. Ben Shelton and Daniil Medvedev have also already qualified.
You can say the pressure is off the two big guns but you can also suggest they may not want to be pushing themselves to the limit with that bigger event still to come. Both also have the Davis Cup Finals looming.
Alcaraz heads the betting at 2/1 and he will arrive in buoyant mood having won only the second indoor title of his career in Vienna on Sunday.
Sluggish conditions in Austria helped the Spaniard but this isn’t a tournament at which he’s done much at all over the years – he holds a 5-5 win-loss record, has reached just one quarter-final and 12 months ago lost his opening match to Cam Norrie.
Throw in a tough potential opener this time around against Basel runner-up Jiri Lehecka and I’m happy to oppose him at the price.
As for Zverev, he’s failed to win any of his three tournaments since the US Open and Saturday’s defeat to Alex de Minaur in Vienna took his record against top-10 players this season to a poor 3-9. That has to be a concern to potential backers at a Masters 1000 event.
He’s looked a little jaded and, while not far off his best, has just lacked a bit of spark that we saw earlier in the campaign.
Preference would be to side with a player chasing one of those ATP Finals spots – clearly motivation for those men will be high this week and they can be guaranteed to be going full pelt.
In the bottom half, the aforementioned Lehecka is an interesting one.
He’s just made the final in Basel and would certainly be a big threat to Alcaraz if conditions are faster than they were last year.
The Czech has beaten Alcaraz before, although he was beaten by him in Tokyo just a few weeks ago.
However, this is a tough part of the draw with Brandon Nakashima and Arthur Fils potentially having to be beaten just to make the quarter-finals.
I’d rather head the third quarter which looks softer.
It is led by Medvedev, another who could go well if they speed things up. Never shy in coming forward, the Russian bemoaned the Vienna courts last week and if things are similar here I’m not sure he’ll have the right mindset to repeat his 2020 tournament triumph.
Flavio Cobolli and Shanghai champion Alejandro Davidovich Fokina are also in this section but I’m ready to take another chance on RAFAEL JODAR.
With this being his first full season on the main ATP Tour, his indoor experience is pretty limited.
Rafael Jodar, tennis history maker 🇪🇸🌟
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) October 31, 2026
On Monday Jodar will become the quickest player in history to reach the top 10 following his ATP Tour debut (287 days) pic.twitter.com/qvQQLJcwIo
However, the young Spaniard has shown some decent signs on that front.
At the end of last season he beat eventual champion Learner Tien at the Next Gen ATP Finals, while only last week he was serving well in Basel and was only edged out in a final-set tie-break by Sunday’s Basel champion Valentin Vacherot.
He’ll begin against Alejandro Tabilo, whom he beat last week, with Casper Ruud and Flavio Cobolli potential foes in rounds two and three. Medvedev or Fokina could await in the quarter-finals.
Jodar beat Medvedev in the recent Shanghai semi-finals so won’t be cowed there. Indeed, that win could be significant for other reasons ahead of Paris as it was a top-10 win for Jodar, and those have been thin on the ground during his ascent towards the top of the game this year.
Up in the top half, Vacherot is certainly worth considering.
He was a quarter-finalist here 12 months ago and I’d suggest he won’t mind if conditions speed up a bit.
The Monegasque arrives on the back of that success in Basel and while a two-day turnaround is far from ideal, I’d expect him to be trying to make the most of his good form as this will be his final tournament of the season.
Vacherot was also a semi-finalist in Tokyo recently and has certainly been returning to something like his best after an injury-hit summer which saw him miss Wimbledon.
He’ll face seven-time winner Novak Djokovic in round one and if he manages to pull that off – and he beat the Serb in Shanghai last season – then current odds of 80/1 will quickly be slashed.
It’s hard to know what you’ll get from Djokovic these days. While he was champion in Beijing a month ago, he also lost to Jan-Lennard Struff in Basel last week.
Maybe I’ll regret not backing Vacherot but instead I’m going to pick TOMMY PAUL, who is another player I’ve seen some decent things from in recent times.
The American has beaten the likes of Zverev, Hubert Hurkacz, Vacherot and Andrey Rublev since Wimbledon and in recent weeks has made quarters in Shanghai, semis in Lyon and quarters in Vienna. At those events, he’s lost to Medvedev, Taylor Fritz and Alcaraz respectively. No disgrace there.
He’s one of those still in ATP Finals contention and he’ll need to at least reach the final this week if he’s to play in Turin for the first time. He’ll probably need to win the title.
Maybe that’s fanciful but Paul is ending the season well and what I like about him this week is he’s a player who has a relaxed attitude to conditions – unlike many, ‘I just get on with it’ tends to be his approach.
And Paul has proven he’s an all-rounder, winning titles on hard, grass and clay. In fact, three of his five ATP crowns have come on indoor hard.
Compatriots Tiafoe and Shelton are in his quarter but Paul leads the former 4-1 on the head-to-head, while he’s 2-2 against Shelton, winning their only indoor hardcourt match.
In short, I think there’s plenty to like about Paul at odds of 33/1.
Posted at 18:00 GMT on 01/11/26
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