Ricky Dimon
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The tennis competition at the Paris Olympics will wrap up on Sunday, when the men’s singles final pits Novak Djokovic against Carlos Alcaraz. It’s a rematch of the recent Wimbledon championship, and it’s also a showdown between the tournament’s top 2 seeds. In other words, this is as marquee as a matchup can get.
Let’s take a look at the best bets to me made on the men’s gold-medal match.
Carlos Alcaraz -1.5 sets over Novak Djokovic (+106)
Djokovic is ranked ahead of Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner is #1 in the world, but there is no question about who the current best player on the planet is…. It’s Alcaraz, and it isn’t close. The Spaniard has won each of the last 2 Grand Slams, triumphing at the French Open and Wimbledon. He has now slowed down a bit in his return to Roland Garros, winning all 4 of his matches in straight sets – including a 6-1, 6-1 beatdown of Felix Auger-Aliassime in the semifinals. Moreover, Alcaraz just thrashed Djokovic 6-2, 6-2, 7-6(4) in the Wimbledon title match. Finally, this is something the Serb desperately wants. A gold medal is 1 of only 2 missing puzzle pieces left in his illustrious career, the other being a calendar-year Grand Slam. When he was 1 match away from the latter at the 2021 U.S. Open, Djokovic got erased by Daniil Medvedev 6-4, 6-4, 6-4. This feels like a straightforward, one-break-in-each-set kind of match in Alcaraz’s favor.
Novak Djokovic Under 2.5 service breaks (-165)
Djokovic has struggled physically for much of 2024 and mentally this also won’t be an easy match to handle. As mentioned above, the last time he wanted something really bad he got completely destroyed by Medvedev. There was no such pressure on Djokovic in the recent Wimbledon championship match and he still got blown out by Alcaraz. If this is indeed a short match, obviously that correlates well with few service breaks. There simply wouldn’t be enough time (games played) to yield many breaks. It must be noted that Alcaraz has dropped serve only twice in this entire event. The 21-year-old was broken by Djokovic only once in 3 sets during the recent Wimbledon final. Obviously it’s much easier to break serve on clay that it is grass, but it’s not easy to break Alcaraz regardless of the surface under his feet.
Carlos Alcaraz Under 3.5 service breaks (-140)
If Alcaraz runs away with this match, he won’t have to break serve more than twice or 3 times. Jumping out to a quick lead would allow him to focus on his own service games and not put too much effort into returning. Although the 4-time major champion had no trouble breaking Djokovic at Wimbledon, the Serb is playing better than he was during that tournament. Djokovic has been broken 7 times in 5 matches this week (1.4 per contest). I can definitely see a scenario in which Alcaraz wins the match in routine straight sets without getting broken a single time and breaking Djokovic once in each set.
