It was a rough old day for underdog backers on Sunday at Indian Wells, with only one of 16 (Filip Krajinovic) initially priced up as dogs obliging, and for us it was another frustrating one, with just one winner on the day.
Adrian Mannarino tested Kei Nishikori fully and almost got the win, failing to serve the match out, but he did more than enough to cover the handicap, while Guido Pella beat Alex Bolt as expected, but dropped the second set badly and failed to cover his handicap.
Denis Shapovalov played a fine match indeed to get the better of Stevie Johnson on a remarkable day for favourites, but there’s still a lot of interest in underdogs as we head into round three.
The third round at Indian Wells has produced a fair amount of underdog winners in recent times, with 35% winning this decade and 38% in the last three years (56% last year), which is quite high for a Masters 1000.
On paper it’s not that easy to really fancy any of the eight betting underdogs on Monday’s card, but there are some with possibilities.
Alexander Zverev vs Jan-Lennard Struff
The 5-0 head-to-head in favour of Zverev has made the number three seed a tad short in this match for my liking, given that he’s been sick and barely played so far at Indian Wells and he may be vulnerable against Struff in these conditions.
All five of their head-to-head clashes have taken place on clay, but if we look at the record of Struff away from clay versus top-10 ranked opposition we find that in seven best-of-three-set career matches he’s only failed to cover a +4.5 game handicap once.
That was against Roger Federer in Basel last season, but Struff has covered the other six times, versus Federer, Djokovic, Cilic, Thiem, Wawrinka and Tsonga.
He also did it against Zverev on clay and given that Struff has had two matches to really get used to the tricky conditions here and Zverev has played only a set and a bit and has struggled here in the past I like Struff’s chances of covering here.
Zverev lost first up to Joao Sousa here last year and struggled badly against Facundo Bagnis in 2017 before losing in straight sets to Nick Kyrgios, so he’s yet to show anything like his best tennis here.
Add to that his physical condition, of which he said after the virtual walkover against an injured Martin Klizan in round two: “Probably the worst I have felt going into a match in my career maybe. I didn't do much after Acapulco and I'm just happy to be on the court right now. Today I'm going straight to bed,” and we have a possible opportunity for Struff.
I’ll take Zverev’s comments with a pinch of salt, but it’s hardly a positive for his chances, and Struff has every chance to carry on covering a big handicap against top-10 opposition here.
Elsewhere, Yoshihito Nishioka is more than capable of taking down Felix Auger-Aliassime if the young Canadian strays from his fine form of late, which he surely will do sooner or later.
Miomir Kecmanovic has compiled some good hard court stats over the past year (25-12 win/loss and 104.9 hold/break total at all levels), which has made him favourite against Laslo Djere, whose hard courts numbers are weaker.
However, the confidence that Djere is playing with at the moment makes him an underdog with every chance in this all-Serbian clash on Stadium 4.
Gael Monfils has a patchy recent record against left-handers, but he doesn’t lose to baseline grinders like Albert Ramos very often, while I’d expect the serve of Milos Raonic to be too much for the rather short (1.8m) Marcos Giron to cope with in these conditions.
In Giron’s favour is today’s forecast, which predicts cool, cloudy and potentially rainy conditions, but the time on the ball that he was allowed by Alex De Minaur and what he’ll get today couldn’t be more different.
Our remaining outright hope Dominic Thiem has a fine record (8-2) against Gilles Simon, who doesn’t usually go well at Indian Wells, while conditions here do suit Thiem, so I’m hopeful of a Thiem win there.
Philipp Kohlschreiber enjoys playing conditions at Indian Wells, too, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he took Novak Djokovic past the 19.5 total games mark in their evening encounter.
But just one bet for me on Monday and that’s to back Struff to test Zverev.
Best Bet
1 point win Struff +4.5 games to beat Zverev at 1.71
