Currently, the ATP World Tour has two major events: singles and doubles. While singles might take most of the limelight, doubles is equally as profitable in the betting scene. It’s much faster and can be even more exciting than singles at times. Doubles focuses down on a much faster playtime and players are ending the points at net more often than they do in singles. Because of this, doubles focuses more on offensive shots than defensive shots and this has led to an insane highlight reel.
With the 2019 season approaching, it’s only right that we find the seven best ATP doubles teams to watch for next year. Because doubles is so unpredictable, you want to find a team that can produce results time and time again. These are going to be teams that are both strong offensively and defensively. They’ll also have good shot selection and court vision. Doubles teams require all of these to succeed and I can promise that each of these teams have this.
Doubles provides an equally strong, if not stronger, market as singles does for tennis betting prospects and with matches lasting a shorter amount of time, I can guarantee you that if done right, doubles can be your pathway to betting success. Take into consideration that these teams can change since doubles partners can vary at times on the tour. Most of the time, though, doubles pairings will stay the same throughout the entire tennis season.
If we’re talking South African tennis, the most common name that will come to mind is Kevin Anderson. However, there’s one other superstar on the tennis scene right now and that’s Raven Klaasen. Together, him and his partner, Michael Venus, have become one of tennis’s most feared duos.
Together, the team went far into several different tournaments. They made it to the finals of the Rogers Cup, Libema Open, and Tokyo Open. At Wimbledon, they almost secured their first Grand Slam together but lost to Mike Bryan and Jack Sock in the finals. However, they performed extremely well at the Marseille Open, winning the entire thing and dropping only two sets along the way.
Together, Klaasen and Venus naturally work together extremely well. Klaasen is more of the team leader, calling the shots along the way and initiating the plays while Michael Venus is more of the firepower. With an extremely huge forehand and superb strength at net, all Klaasen needs to do is set up Venus and Venus can finish off the point either from the baseline or from the net. He doesn’t really care because he do them both.
Furthermore, Klaasen has some of the biggest returns on the doubles tour right now. It’s hard for the opposing team to get an effective first volley in whenever they serve-and-volley because Raven can hit such strong shots. Especially from the advantage side where most doubles players struggles, Raven excels. He can hit passing shots off of what would be an ace and he can usually instigate the offensive off of a second serve.
The only problem with them right now is that they still don’t have full synergy. Michael Venus sometimes overhits and his returns could do a little tweaking. Meanwhile, Klaasen can get a stronger presence at the net. But with time, I believe that this team can go extremely far into the year. They’ve provided some of the strongest results since the start of the year and for a bettor, that’s something that always speaks good things.
This Colombian duo has had a strong year. They achieved a career high ranking of number five and made it to the semifinals of the Nitto ATP Finals despite having a tough group to start out with. The two players have shown progress that could lead to a stronger 2019 season.
Together, in 2018, they captured one title at the 2018 Masters 1000 in Rome and reached three finals, the biggest one being at the Australian Open. They also reached the final at the Argentina Open in Buenos Aires as well as the Masters 1000 Cincinnati Open final. Furthermore, they’ve also seen their fair share of success in the previous years. In 2017, they captured two titles and made it to three finals while in 2016, they managed to capture four titles and reached one final.
The two players, together, have also played extremely well outside of playing together since their start around 2014. Robert Farah spent time at the University of South California playing for the team where he ended his season as the number one singles player in the country and the number two doubles team in the country.
While Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal both struggled on their own, whenever they united together, the two Colombians soon became unstoppable. The two players are extremely found of the serve plus one technique. Rather than trying to aggressively push to net, they like to try to end the point right after it starts. Both Farah and Cabal are good at placing the serve targets and they’re also both great at poaching the return that comes after.
Therefore, their service games tend to be relatively short. If they’re not playing offense with a serve plus one game plan, they’re most likely doing a one up and one back play that eventually ends at the net. While this doesn’t work for most doubles pairings, it works for Cabal and Farah because they’re just so good at volleying so they only need one to make it work.
This Colombian duo is going to make its way to a grand final appearance one day. They’ve already seen a lot of success from their 2018 season, reaching several pivotal points such as the title at the Rome Open and their final appearance at the Australian Open. Before, they had trouble going up against the big names but now, they’re thriving. Heck, they took down Bob and Mike Bryan in the semifinals of the AO, something that very few teams can brag about doing at a Grand Slam.
Most fans don’t even recognize these two names when it comes to doubles. But that makes this pick even better because no bettor will know the potential of this doubles pairing. This team has consistently improved over the past four years and it looks like 2019 is going to be their best year yet.
Kubot and Melo are a team that have been together for a while now and they’ve seen their fair share of success. In 2017, they secured six doubles titles—three Masters, one Open, and a Wimbledon title. 2018 saw this success replicated.
They won four major titles together in 2018 and made the US Open final this year before falling to the duo of Jack Sock and Mike Bryan. But nonetheless, the two have forged an unforgettable relationship together that has shown success throughout the years. While 2018 saw more challenges come their way, Kubot and Melo held strong and still put up good numbers. This is largely thanks to the fact that Kubot and Melo’s synergy allows them to move together as one unit.
Kubot and Melo have different areas of strength. For example, Kubot’s volley technique is near impeccable and when he’s at the net, he can close out points efficiently. Meanwhile, Melo’s tall height ensures that teams can’t lob over him and his reach also makes him a great defensive player at net.
These two players don’t like to play at the baseline but rather, at the net. Most of the points they win, they win at net and in order to have this playstyle succeed, a high synergy count is necessary. Melo and Kubot have this synergy in their game. Unfortunately, this year, they failed to make it to the Knockout Rounds of the Nitto ATP Finals but they still had an extremely successful year. Their extreme aggression at the net always makes them a dangerous team, one that puts every opponent on edge.
Together, they’ve experienced success as well as failure. They’ve both reached a career high ranking of number one in the world and they’ve both known what it’s like to be outside of the top ten. Therefore, they can use this experience and synergy to transition into an even better 2019 season.
If we asked you who 2018’s number one ranking prior to the ATP Finals would go to, you would probably go with Herbert and Mahut or Soares and Murray. But this year, the number one spot went to Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic. Unexpected, right? I know.
Marach and Pavic both had an extremely successful year, playing some of the best tennis the doubles tour has seen in a while now. Together, they won four titles and made it to five finals in the 2018 season. They won at Doha, Auckland, and Geneva. But their biggest win this season was at the Australian Open. It was here that they defeated Cabal and Farah of Colombia to take home their biggest win yet, a Grand Slam title.
Furthermore, they went deep into several tournament. They made it to the finals of the Masters Monte Carlo, Rotterdam, Hamburg, and the China Open. They also made it to the Roland Garros finals but fell to Herbert and Mahut. They went into the Nitto ATP Finals expected to win the entire thing. Unfortunately, they fell short in the Groups Stage. They didn’t play the same playstyle that helped them do so well throughout the season.
Both Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic have extremely strong serves. They use this to exploit the weaknesses of their opponent so that their partner can finish off the points at net. Even their second serve is hard to take on the offensive. This allows Marach and Pavic to play the opening points how they want to on their serve and usually leads to them having fairly quick service games. Of course, they aren’t always consistent and this can lead to some unforced errors.
While they may not be able to match the forehands of players like Jack Sock or Michael Venus and they certainly don’t have the return game of Farah or Klaasen, what they do well is play offensive tennis. They use every resource they have to exploit their opponents and abuse that weakness till either their opponent changes their game or they win. This goes to show the power of their playstyle. With consistent aggression and a knowledge base on how to put your opponents on the defense, Marach and Pavic were able to go into the Nitto ATP Finals as the number one seed.
Of course, they would fall short early into the tournament but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to fall short next year. They were placed in a bracket with three of the best teams in ATP history and of course, being a new number one team can put even more pressure on top of that. Next year, if Marach and Pavic stay together, we might see another Grand Slam title go their way. They don’t play physical. They play smart and this is something that will keep them as a top team for the future.
Like Kubot and Melo, Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut are a team that have been around for quite some time now. They’ve been playing since 2015 and have seen a lot of success come their way since. They’ve stacked twelve titles together as a team and made six finals as well. In 2015, Mahut and Herbert won the U.S. Open together. In 2016, they had four major titles out of the five won that year. They won Wimbledon alongside three Masters 1000 titles—Monte Carlo, Miami, and Indian Wells.
Then, in 2017, they won yet another three Masters 1000 titles, this time in three different places—Cincinnati, Canada, and Rome. While they didn’t win any Grand Slams that year, they still had a successful season, reaching a career high ranking of number one in the world. 2018 didn’t see as much success as the past two seasons but they were still able to win the 2018 Roland Garros tournament over Pavic and Marach while also securing the Rotterdam Open final. Another major step in their season this year was reaching the Nitto ATP finals which was a first for the doubles pairing.
Despite being underdogs and starting out in a tough group that consisted of Bryan/Sock, Kubot/Melo, and world number ones at the time, Marach/Pavic, Herbert and Mahut were still able to make it through to the semis where they would take down Columbian duo, Cabal and Farah.
While they did end up losing to Mike Bryan and Jack Sock in the finals, the fact that these two were able to make it so far made up for a disappointing season where they didn’t replicate the success found in 2016 and 2017. Since Herbert and Mahut have been around, they’ve always played textbook tennis. They’ve always played the doubles strategies that win them points. Everything they do is textbook. They move textbook. They serve textbook. They volley textbook.
Everything they do, they do by the rules but they do it so well that it’s the winning formula every single time. They don’t try to shake it up with huge forehands and winners. They play what they need to play in order to win and it works…most of the time.
If you watch them play, they like to work their way up to net on their serves and keep a defensive line on returns. This is standard for almost any doubles team but it can become repetitive and thus, people can predict this. Therefore, duos like Klaasen/Venus can easily disrupt the flow by going for a huge return or sending a ball straight at their face. At points, even Marach and Pavic had the edge on them from the baseline because of their textbook antics.
While their strategies may have gotten them far into the 2018 Nitto ATP Finals, they’re going to need to change it up for 2019. Some options could be adding more power to the first serve or mixing up the return game. Either way, by adding something new to their game, they’re going to be mixing experience with innovation and that’s going to be a formula no team can counteract easily.
You know of Andy Murray and his accomplishments on the singles ATP Tour but his brother has achieved just as much as him, if not more, on the doubles scene. Paired with Bruno Soares, these two have been a threatening team since 2016.
Since their start together, the pair has brought home nine doubles titles, two of them being Grand Slams—Australian Open and US Open. This year, they secured their first Masters 1000 title in Cincinnati while also winning the Citi Open and Acapulco. Furthermore, they also made it to several notable finals, four of them being Masters 1000 titles—Shanghai, Cincinnati (in 2017), Canada, and Monte Carlo. These two have seen their fair share of success since pairing up in 2016.
Because they’ve spent two years together on the court, the two know the insides and outs of each other’s gameplay. They know which shots the other excels at and the shots that they aren’t as comfortable making. They’ve created complementary playstyles that are firm and unwavering and you can see this in a real-time match. This playstyle helped barely edge past notable competition at the Nitto ATP Finals and secure one of the four spots for the Knockout Rounds.
They ended up losing to the eventual champions, Mike Bryan and Jack Sock, in the semifinals but it was close, going three sets. The team has shown consistency all throughout their years playing and it looks like this consistency is going to be the same going into 2019. Jamie Murray is a very aggressive player but he excels from all parts of the court and finds unorthodox shots as a comfort zone. When he volleys, it doesn’t seem like he’s volleying but rather swinging a forehand in the air.
Yet it works and this causes extremely fast volleys that can pass the net player if they aren’t paying attention. Furthermore, his baseline is equally as strong as he can rally from the baseline to pass an aggressive doubles team if need be. His partner, Bruno Soares, picks up from there. Jamie Murray isn’t extremely strong when it comes to returns but Bruno Soares excels at them. That’s why he takes the backhand side despite Jamie Murray being a left-handed player.
Bruno Soares’ serve is equally as powerful and he uses it to set up Jamie Murray who ends most points with a volley whenever Soares is on serve. Furthermore, Soares’ volleys are just as strong. He holds good offense and defense when he’s at the net, able to ward off attackers just as well as he is able to poach and end points. The only thing he can’t match Jamie Murray in is baseline rallies which is what Murray excels at when they aren’t on serve.
The two players have complementary playstyles for each other. Bruno Soares is good at starting up the points and finishing them if need be while Jamie Murray holds off attackers while also capitalizing off of Soares’ shots. These two have seen quite a bit of success come their way since they paired together in 2016. I won’t be surprised if next year, they finish off the season with a Grand Slam title in their hands.
During their peak, the Bryan Brothers were the most dangerous duo of doubles partners on the field. They’ve won sixteen Grand Slam titles together and have spent 438 weeks together as the world numbers ones.
However, this was when they were at their best. Now, as they both near retirement age, some of the repercussions are beginning to show. Currently, both of them are forty years of age and with the competition they’re facing around ten or more years younger than them, they’ve had to find craftier ways to win.
Unfortunately, this was stopped in Madrid after Bob Bryan suffered an injury that required hip surgery. With Bob Bryan out of the fight, Mike Bryan was required to find a new partner to continue his career and that new spot went to Jack Sock. While fans were hesitant at first, Mike Bryan and Jack Sock quickly began to show results and these results shocked everyone. They won three titles together and all of them were major titles.
The duo first won at Wimbledon which was a tournament that really pushed both players to their limits. Each round was a coin toss for both teams but Bryan and Sock came out on top, barely pushing past. Aside from the Round of 64 in which their opponents retired, Bryan and Sock went four sets or more with every single opponent.
But they prevailed and that proved Jack Sock’s worth as a doubles partner to Mike Bryan. Jack Sock wasn’t always his partner though. After Wimbledon, Mike Bryan experimented with players like Francis Tiafoe and Edouard Roger-Vasselin but didn’t find the same success as he did with Jack Sock. Sock and Bryan won again, this time at the US Open, but in more dominating fashion. Throughout the entire tournament, the doubles pair only dropped one set and that was to Cabal and Farah in the semifinals.
This gave the two enough points to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals where they were then put into a group that had some of the world’s toughest doubles pairings. There was Kubot and Melo, the Brazilian and Polish doubles pair that had volleys that could rival the Bryan Brothers. There was Herbert and Mahut, the French duo that had proved troublesome for Bob and Mike Bryan in the past. And then there was Marach and Pavic, the team that had dominated the 2018 season with their fundamental playstyles.
Despite their fairly new status, Mike Bryan and Jack Sock managed to barely edge past Marach/Pavic and Kubot/Melo to grab the second seeding spot to qualify for the Knockout Rounds. It was here that they took on the infamous pair of Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares, a doubles pairing that had risen to fame since their start in the late 2016 season.
Bryan and Sock barely edged past them, winning in three sets, largely thanks to Jack Sock’s craftiness and blistering forehands as well as Mike Bryan’s experience. The duo were then set to face Mahut and Herbert, an opponent that Mike Bryan knew too well. Since the Bryans first met the French pair have proved troublesome, beating them at places like the Cincinnati Open, Madrid, Miami, and Rome. They were their toughest foe yet and even in the groups stage, they destroyed Sock and Bryan with a straight set 6-2, 6-2 victory.
But in the finals, it was a completely different ball game. The game went three sets with both sides playing miraculous doubles. Mahut’s serves were on point the entire time while Herbert was finishing off volleys left and right. But at the same time, Mike Bryan was holding fast with his own strong set of skills such as his returns and his court vision while Jack Sock was the firepower, blasting away volleys and groundstrokes the entire match.
Together, the duo barely clinched through with a 5-7, 6-1, 13-11 victory. They even saved a match point at 10-11 with a superb overhead by Mike Bryan. Ending it with a double-fault by Herbert, Jack Sock and Mike Bryan closed off a surprisingly successful season that no one thought would go anywhere near the way it went. But how did they pull it off? Mike Bryan is very selective of his partners and the main reason he played for so long with Bob Bryan was because Bob Bryan was one of the only players who could fit Mike’s playstyle.
Simply put, Jack Sock can play with anyone. Jack’s doubles fundamentals are phenomenal. He knows how to return, serve, volley, and rally with a doubles-oriented mindset and his aggression fits well into the concept of a strong doubles team. At their prime, the doubles pair of Bob and Mike Bryan were known for being some of the most aggressive players on the tour and Jack Sock fit perfectly into Bob Bryan’s shoes. Jack’s poaches were extremely fast and he also had great hands to compensate.
But what separated Jack from Bob was his craftiness. Jack doesn’t play by the rules. He doesn’t just do the typical playstyle of serving-and-volleying while playing one-up one-back for returns. He likes to jab whenever he can and make his opponents uncomfortable.
For example, he’s willing to randomly send a forehand blazing down the line just to startle his opponent in the middle of a rally. Furthermore, Jack’s backhand is his major weakness. But in doubles, with him standing on the backhand side, it’s easier for him to run around everything and hit it as a forehand. The playstyle of Mike Bryan and Jack Sock doesn’t deviate much from the days of whenever Mike and Bob Bryan played together. They’re still extremely aggressive. It’s just that Jack Sock can be a little more unorthodox when it comes to playing like it.
However, with the Bryan brothers looking to reunite in the 2019 season, it could be Jack Sock returning to the singles scene. But it doesn’t really matter. Before Bob Bryan left, the two were still extremely dominant and it looks like they’re going to keep it that way.
There’s also the consideration that Bob Bryan might not be fully recovered just yet and that could mean Jack Sock and Mike Bryan will continue their dominant legacy together. Either way, it’s going to be a win-win for Mike Bryan. He ruled the tennis world with Jack Sock and he can do it with Bob Bryan too. It just depends on which one is his partner for the following year.
As an avid tennis fan myself, I would recommend you keep your eyes on the French pairing of Herbert and Mahut. These two proved everyone wrong. They weren’t expected to make it so far into the 2018 season yet they managed to win a Roland Garros title together and make it to the finals of the Nitto ATP Finals. They’re extremely consistent in playstyle and play textbook doubles that never fails because Herbert and Mahut are both extremely strong when it comes to their fundamentals. I won’t be surprised if they pull off yet another great season.
Predictions-wise, I can see them winning another Grand Slam next year, possibly at Roland Garros again. With the French crowd behind their back, they’re going to have the home-court advantage and that can be the difference between a win and a loss. These two are going to be extremely profitable to bet on. Keep your eyes on them because it’s going to be worth it.
Doubles seems to be an intimidating and fast-paced sport at first but as you edge along, you’ll quickly learn that this form of tennis can be extremely fun to watch and play. But it’s tricky to bet on. Doubles can be unpredictable if you don’t know the doubles pairings.
A good doubles pairing needs two well-rounded players and good synergy. Only the best teams have that. The seven doubles teams mentioned above have both of these traits but they also have something else that separates them from the rest of the crowd. For example, Murray and Soares work together with Murray calling the shots and Soares finishing them off. Herbert and Mahut like to play textbook doubles with no flashy plays. Marach and Pavic push to the net no matter the circumstance.
The list goes on and on but each of these doubles teams have proven themselves to show results and in sports betting, that’s what you want: results. It doesn’t matter if you choose to bet on Klaasen/Venus next year or Murray/Soares, you’re going to see that choosing any of these teams will drastically increase your betting experience.
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
