For those who don’t know me, my name is Mike and I go by TreyJ989 in Slack and on Twitter. Normally you can find me kicking around the soccer and NFL channels, but today I am here to introduce you to DFS Tennis. We have been crushing it on the tennis landscape and building our bankrolls in the process. Here are the fundamentals you need to know so you, too, can pad your bankroll.
Tennis tournaments run in a bracket-style format. Picture march madness but a lot more toned down in the buzz department. Depending on where the tournaments are being held in the world, at the time, you can get a wide range of lock times. I have seen locks at 3 am and I have seen them at 1 pm. Your first order of business is to budget your research time well because we all have to sleep and eat at some point. This is especially tough at the onset of a new tournament where there could be as many 64 players that you need to account for in a matter of hours. Don’t worry, though, because it gets easier the more you do it. Developing a repeatable process will help you, immensely.
I like to take a stats-based approach to figuring out my pool. In the past, I’ve mentioned that vegas and ELO numbers were the beginning to my process. I have simplified my process to where vegas odds is a check after I sift through the stats. Mostly, I want to see where the line movements are going. ELO helps me evaluate lesser-known players and is better than the normal ranking but goes largely unused at this point.
The Stats
The first thing to understand is that there are key differences between the men’s and women’s games. The men’s game is more serving-based, while the women’s game is more return-centric. Before we get to the key stay that separates each game, let’s look at the common ones.
1st in %
This stat is the percentage of first serves taken that are legal. In DFS tennis you, get negative points for double faults. I like to see someone who is getting a high percentage of first serves in so the double fault doesn’t even come into play. It also goes hand in hand with our next stat…
1st %
1st % is the percentage of points won on their first serve. We can get a sense for just how many points a player might score by looking at these 2 stats we have covered thus far. The server can be more aggressive with their first serve, so it tends to be the more difficult serve for a returner to handle. If you see someone with a 1st % down around 60%, you know that they are a weaker server.
2nd %
Inevitably, players will miss on their first serve. This stat accounts for the percentage of 2nd serve points won. One’s ability to win a game,set, or match can often come down to their ability to win points when they can’t use their best serves. It partially comes down to that and also to…
v2nd %
This is the other half of 2nd serves. Your ability to win can come down to your ability to win your 2nd serve AND your ability to win your opponents 2nd serve. You will need to be able to keep numbers straight in your head or a calculator because, while this stat is tracked on Tennis Abstract, it is not summarized. This is also one of the most important stats to know about a player, as it sets them apart.
Gender-Specific Stats
I want to note the rough idea of points a player will win with their serve, but their ability to win on their opponent’s 2nd serve is crucial to setting them apart. It’s not the only stat to set players apart. Now, we will talk about the most important stat for each game. This stat carries the biggest weight in determining a base for my picking a winner.
Men’s Tennis
The “Hold” stat is the most important stat in men’s tennis. This is a player’s percentage of service games won — or their ability to hold serve. Its symbol is hld% and the higher the better.
Women’s Tennis
As I mentioned before, the women’s game is a return game. As such, I want to know how many points a women’s tennis player wins from the return side. You will notice a RPW stat and most will be between 42% and 46%. Below that is fairly weak and above that is elite. I will side with the better returner 95% of the time, but I take into account their recent ability to win points
Putting it together
Now that we have our stats and we have the odds and we know how skilled the participants are on the given surface, we need to apply it to each matchup. I prefer to look at how a player has done on the given surface in this particular year. To make this article timeless, I would use Last 52-week stats if the player has not played much or if the match is taking place in the first 4 months of the year. You want a good solid history of matches so you can see their recent form on a given surface.
I like to write the matchups down and list the stats out for each player right there plain as day. The numbers will tell you a story. The Vegas odds will also tell you a story. I use those stories to come up with a winner in each matchup. (NOTE: I have not said the word “salary” once… except for just now in this note). To determine my winners, I just look to see who is winning the point battle.
Let’s try an exercise: Which player would you rather have?
| ELO | 1st in % | 1st % | RPW | |
| Player A | 1629.7 | 67.4 | 57.1 | 43.8 |
| Player B | — | 55 | 66.9 | 41.6 |
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You would want player A, right? This was a real match last week (as of writing this) between Linette and Rogowska. Linette is player A and she did indeed win. What is most important, though, is she was identified as a potential winner, per my process, and she was a part of my player pool.
Cash vs GPP
The name of the game is winning. If you are playing GPP, you need all of them if you want to win. You should always be shooting to win. In cash, we don’t need 6 out of 6 to hit the cash line. 4 winners and a couple losers who can push it to 3 sets while winning a few games is the plan I typically aim for.
I have a 2 part criterion for evaluating cash viability. The first part is name recognition. The majority of the public doesn’t know these players as household names and you will find a lot of people rostering Federer, Nadal, Serena Williams, or Wozniacki because these are names they know and because are they pretty good tennis players.
The second criterium is vegas. This is the part of the process where I really lean on vegas. The moneyline on Wozniacki’s last match had her as a -940 favorite. I evaluate the story that Vegas is pushing my way and let them tell me who the big favorites are and whether or not they are projected for a straight sets victory. Straight sets victories are awesome for cash but definitely necessary for GPP.
That “S” Word
We can finally say that “S” word, now. Salary. By now, I have an idea for my pool of players. I have identified potential GPP targets and potential cash plays. I will add in the player salary at this point because I want an undeterred notion of my GPP pivots. If we go back to the Linette/Rogowska match from above, she was cheaper than Wozniacki and Stephens, but more expensive than Serena Williams. These are 3 very public names and I had already identified a GPP target in Serena’s opponent. Linette was 10% owned at $9,900. I bring salary in late because it keeps me from forming lineups in my head. I don’t need any biases clogging the brain.
We want to use every bit of the salary you can. Unlike other DFS sports where we often leave some on the board, we want to use every dollar. I do not leave more than 200 dollars on any slate, typically. I have been watching the winning lineups and they use all their salary, too. The key is getting the right players, so focus your efforts on finding winners.
Parting Thoughts…
That’s how I come up with my player pool and how I decide which players go into which category. Some things to note before I go.
- Unless a match has at least an O/U of 26 for a 3-set match or 47 for a 5-set match, do not play both players from a single match in your cash lineup. Even then, I would ask myself if I really need the loser of that one over someone else. Never play both in your GPP lineup.
- I do note career head-to-head records but it’s not something I would focus on. You can use it if you have time; but, like I said at the beginning, you need to budget your research time well. Often times, much of that history is a few years old.
- If I need a tie-breaker, I look at how good the player is at saving break points. Conversely, break points converted is not a stat I consider.
- You might ask, what about Aces? 8 aces are barely worth more than 4 break points. Unless their name is Nick Kyrgios or John Isner, focus on the breaks.
- The last thing I do is check the line moves. I don’t always follow them. If the numbers are too good to ignore, I do not mind going contrary.
Best of luck to you and your lineups. Feel free to hit me up if you have any questions.