The opening day of the ATP Indian Wells tournament sees a series of first round matches played at the BNP Paribas Open when those who are not seeded fight it out for a place in the second round of the event where one of the seeds will be awaiting the winner.
That means we have to wait until the weekend to see the very biggest names in action but there are still some recognisable figures on the schedule on Thursday so we should get a decent day of tennis despite the absence of the bigger stars.
Stadium 1
The first two matches on the main Stadium 1 court are both from the men’s draw with the opening game seeing the American player Sam Querrey looking to make it through to the second round. He meets the German player Daniel Altmaier before the second American on show takes to the court. That is Tommy Paul who faces the veteran Feliciano Lopez on what is one of the better matches on the card. The night session also gets underway with a men’s match and a third American is on the show court when Frances Tiafoe meets the unpredictable Benoit Paire.
Stadium 2
There are two matches on the Stadium 2 court from the ATP draw on Thursday but we have to wait for a couple of women’s matches to be played out before the first of them comes along. When the men’s action comes along we see Kei Nishikori meeting Joao Sousa in what might be tiring to watch let alone for the two men to play in! We then have to wait for the women to open up the night session before Alejandro Davidovich Fokina meets Steve Johnson in the one men’s match in the evening.
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Stadium 3
There are three men’s matches on Stadium 3 on Thursday and they come along in the opening three matches, which will help following them for us in the UK a whole lot easier. The big serving Australian player Alexei Popyrin is first up when he takes on the Serbian player Miomir Kecmanovic before we get to see Mackenzie McDonald on show. He faces James Duckworth in the second match of the day before the final men’s match on this court sees Marcos Giron taking on the US Open quarter finalist Botic van de Zandschulp.
Best of the Rest
The outside courts are all a mixture of women’s matches, men’s matches and doubles action and with most of the bigger names on the opening day on the three main courts there isn’t a huge amount to get pulses racing but of those who are recognisable to casual and proper tennis fans alike we have Vasek Pospisil, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Tennys Sandgren and Guido Pella with all of those being in action on the streamed courts.
Betting
I’ll open up the tournament with the one bet which comes in the form of Botip van de Zandschulp who I think will have too much power and clean hitting for a Marcos Giron, who comes here off the back of a couple of decent efforts in the indoor hard court events in Europe but this is a different ball game with the ball flying through the air and sitting up for the bigger man to hit through the ball in a completely different way to a hard court.
Van de Zandschulp was under pressure when the qualifying for this tournament began because of his run to the US Open quarter final. Had he not made it through to the main draw then people would have started to accuse him of being a flash in the pan but that isn’t the case. He actually looks the real deal. Giron will have his moments over the remainder of the season but he has never struck me as a player who naturally enjoys the quicker courts whereas we’ve seen the Dutchman enjoy them both in the US Open and in Australia earlier in the year. He is accustomed to the conditions having played a couple of qualifying matches and can use that to his advantage to win here.
Tips
Back B.van de Zandschulp to beat M.Giron for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
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