Tennis BETTING PREVIEW - Hubert Hurkacz vs Tommy Paul

Tennis

2026-07-03 - Hubert Hurkacz vs Tommy Paul

A Sports Betting Preview by FirstDown

Hubert Hurkacz (POL) vs #21 Tommy Paul (USA)
Tennis : Wimbledon Third Round
Friday 3rd July 2026 - Scheduled 3:30pm (British Time)

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Preview

Barring a change in mind regarding his retirement, the answer to who beat Roger Federer in his final Grand Slam match will be Hubert Hurkacz, who upset the dominant Wimbledon Champion in a match right here in SW19 in 2021.

Hubert Hurkacz reached the Semi Final that year where he was beaten by Matteo Berrettini, but he was surprisingly beaten early in 2022 and 2024 and the best run the Pole has had at Wimbledon since 2021 is a single appearance in the Fourth Round. For a player with the serve that he possesses, Hubert Hurkacz will feel he should have had more success at Wimbledon and he remains dangerous.

Injuries have meant Hubert Hurkacz entered the main draw as the World Number 96 and so the two wins on the board feel important to just reverse a trend that saw him slipping out of the top 100. That would have meant having to go through Qualifiers for the biggest events on the Tour and it may have been a challenge for a 29 year old to want to dig in and go again.

Hubert Hurkacz has beaten both Casper Ruud and Sebastian Ofner without dropping a set, but he will be the first to admit that this Third Round match represents a significant step up in class.

In warm up events, Hubert Hurkacz was beaten in the First Round in Hertogenbosch and Second Round in Halle and now has to take on the Queen's Club Runner Up in Tommy Paul.

The American comes into the Wimbledon tournament as the Number 21 Seed, but Tommy Paul has not really ripped things up in SW19 as you may have thought. He does have one Quarter Final under his belt, but Paul won Queen's Club last year and was beaten in the Second Round at Wimbledon a couple of weeks later and so there will be a feeling that he has not achieved as much as he perhaps should have in this Grand Slam.

Tommy Paul is another player who has yet to drop a set in the tournament and he is a win or two away from cracking back into the top 20 of the World Rankings and having a real lift ahead of the US Open, which begins in late August. Much like Hubert Hurkacz, the Tommy Paul numbers show a player who has long been comfortable on the grass courts and so this has the makings of a competitive match.

Whoever serves closest to their best will win and conditions in London should see both rolling through those service games against largely limited returners.

Out of the two, the clear edge is with Tommy Paul as far as the returning goes, but Hubert Hurkacz will feel he can get into tie-breakers and then it just takes one or two good returns to win a set.

In the previous matches on the Tour against one another, Tommy Paul has shown that superior returning to hold a 3-1 advantage, although the two hard court matches have been split (the other two have been on clay). They are meeting for the first time on the grass, but the feeling is that Tommy Paul is playing at a higher level and should eventually come through.

However, Hubert Hurkacz can use the hotter conditions to make sure he is serving with effectiveness to at least win a set and there is every chance the players can combine for enough service games to eventually surpass this total line set.

Prediction

Both players are capable of winning at least one set and that should set this Third Round match well on the way to surpassing this total games line.

The Pick :

Hubert Hurkacz 1-3 Tommy Paul

FIXED ODDS BETTING :

I'll back Over 40.5 Total Games at 1.89 with Cloudbet