Top Five Tennis Grand Slam Upsets

Grand slams are the pinnacle of tennis, a stage where the best of the best showcase their talents in these prestigious events. Below, we give you the low-down of what we consider to be the five most staggering upsets in any grand slam competition that we can remember watching.

Jelena Ostapenko Stuns Simona Halep

In 2017, Rafael Nadal did his thing in the French Open, winning the tournament as expected, beating Stan Wawrinka in the finals 6–2, 6–3, and 6–1 in sets. So, everything went as predicted on the male side in that year’s Roland Garros, even though defending champion Novak Djokovic was also given decent odds of going all the way. However, in the female tournament, a shocker occurred, as in front of a crowd of fifteen thousand, at the Court Philippe-Chatrier, Latvian player Jeļena Ostapenko stunned the tennis world by winning the French Open as an unseeded competitor, the first to do so since 1933.

Ostapenko defeated Simona Halep in the 2017 French Open, a player who had been ranked as the world’s best for sixty-four weeks between 2017 and 2019 and who bookies gave 4-1 odds to win the 2017 French Open. On the flip side, bookmakers gave Ostapenko 100-1 pre-tournament odds. Hence, her 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over Halep can get counted as one of the more unlikely feats modern tennis has seen, which she accomplished as the world’s 47th ranked player.

George Bastl Surprises Pete Sampras

Before Roger Federer’s rise to fame, most tennis fans would make the argument that Pete Sampras was the best player of all time. Nicknamed Pistol Pete, Sampras claimed sixty-four ATP singles titles and was ranked number one from 1993 to 1998. He ruled Wimbledon throughout the 1990s and only failed to put a French Open trophy on his mantel.

In 2002, Sampras ended his career in a year when he won his last grand slam tournament, the US Open. Before this competition, Pistol Pete got flabbergasted by George Bastl of Switzerland, a 145thranked fast-court specialist, who gave Sampras an early Wimbledon exit, beating him in five sets. The second-round exit was Sampras’ earliest grass-court exit in eleven years. Bastl, who played college tennis in the US, notched the most significant win of his career at Court 2 in front of less than three thousand people. Although we were not able to find any odds data for this upset, we would assume they would be in the 15-1 range for a Bastl triumph. 

Steffi Graf Loses to Lori McNeil

On June 21, 1994, the first round of Wimbledon happened, and in it, Steffi Graf, the then world’s best female player, came up against Lori McNeil from Texas. McNeil turned pro eleven years before her encounter with Graf, and she played tennis for the Cowgirls, the Oklahoma State University team. Even though Lori had reached two grand slam semi-finals, the 1987 US Open one and Wimbledon’s 1994 edition, she gets best remembered for her underdog victory over Graf in the first round at Wimbledon in 1994, which marked the first time a champion got eliminated so early in a grand slam competition.

For further context on this Graf loss, it is essential to note that the legendary German player had been sitting on top of the rankings from 1987 to 1991, and she had made a return there in 1994, losing only three times before her Wimbledon appearance in the past year leading up to it. McNeil was the second African American to enter the top ten rankings, and her biggest accomplishment to that point was her mentioned 1987 US Open semi-final entry, where she got denied a spot in the final by Graf. McNeil beat Graft 7-5 and 7-6 and went to her second semi-final, where she got eliminated by Conchita Martinize in three sets, who went on to become Wimbledon’s 1994 champion.

We tried looking for any odds connected to this match but struggled to find any viable predictions. Since McNiel was ranked 22nd at the time and Graf number one, we would estimate that Lori would have been given between 8-1 and 10-1 winning odds.

Peter Doohan Defeats Boris Becker

Every tennis fan knows Boris Becker, who entered history as the person who won the gentleman’s singles Wimbledon Championship at seventeen and collected sixty-four notable titles, including an Olympic gold medal in doubles. Yet, few have heard of or remember Australian tennis player Peter Doohan. Doohan sadly died in 2017 due to motor neuron disease. His highest ATP rating came in August 1987, when he was ranked 43th. It was around this time he unexpectedly defeated Boris Becker in Wimbledon’s second round. The win earned him the Becker Wrecker nickname, as he denied the German teenager a third straight Wimbledon title. Becker eventually won his third crown in 1989, his last in Wimbledon.

Some say that Doohan would have gotten 100-1 odds back then. Yet, in today’s modern sportsbook landscape, we doubt the odds would have surpassed 20-1. Still, it must get said that Doohan sat at the 70th spot in the ATP ratings before the match, and Becker was the reigning champion. Therefore, he would have been a significant underdog in any era.

Robin Soderling Beats Rafael Nadal

Rafael Nadal Parera has fourteen French Open titles, a record unlikely to get surpassed soon. His eighty-one clay-win streak is the longest single-surface one ever. In 2009, the Spaniard had claimed four Roland Garros titles in a row, and it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that he would put a fifth one behind his name in 2009. Nonetheless, things did not pan out as predicted when Nadal faced Robin Söderling, a Swede whose career highlights were reaching two French Open finals in a row in 2009 and 2010. Naturally, en route to his first, he eliminated Ndala, ending his thirty-one Roland Garros win streak. He beat the champion in four sets and advanced past the fourth round in a Grand Slam for the first time in his career. He lost to Roger Federer in the final.

The next year, Söderling again went all the way, and Nadal was able to exact his revenge in the final for his fifth French Open title. Per a CNBC article, Rafael Nadal was a 31-0 favorite in their 2009 contest, and interestingly enough, despite these lopsided odds, Betfair, at the time, reported notching a betting volume of $28.9 million on this match.  

Top Bitcoin Betting Sites