Having had two 25/1 shots placed in the last two weeks, Andy Schooler returns to preview the opening ATP Masters 1000 event of the season in Indian Wells.
Tennis betting tips: ATP Tour
0.5pt e.w. Tommy Paul to win the title at 80/1 (General)
0.5pt Francisco Cerundolo to win quarter two at 25/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes)
0.5pt Miomir Kecmanovic to win quarter three at 33/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes)
BNP Paribas Open
- Indian Wells, USA (outdoor hard)
So, the odds are up for the opening Masters 1000 event of the ATP Tour season and we have a market which, I suspect, will become rather familiar as the year progresses.
The ‘Big Two’ of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are both 6/4 shots with the rest of the field stretched out behind them. Quite a way behind in fact – it’s 12/1 bar.
If you want the winner, history suggests the best tactic is to pick one of the joint favourites.
Of the last 21 tournaments at which Alcaraz and Sinner have both competed, 20 have seen one of them lift the trophy.
As I wrote ahead of Doha the last time both played, Sinner looks the most vulnerable.
The Italian lost to Jakub Mensik at that Qatar Open and is yet to reach the final here, his best finishes being semi-finals in 2023 and 2024.
The other factor which is a potential issue for Sinner is that he didn’t play here 12 months ago – he was serving his controversial ban at the time – and that means he hasn’t played on the new Laykold courts yet.
They were still on Plexipave in 2024 but while many expected conditions to speed up last season, it wasn’t really the case.
Alcaraz’s view was: “(It’s) kind of the same court, really slow, bounces a lot.”
Daniil Medvedev, a man long critical of sluggish conditions, said it was “very, very slow”.
Indian Wells has long been that way.
While big servers have often had some success – largely due to the fact that the ball travels through the dry desert air pretty quickly – the ball has tended to come up off the court high and slow, rather than skidding through.
That is widely thought to be due to grit getting into the court surface from the desert winds.
In short, these are unique hardcourt conditions and it is subsequently a venue at which many players have struggled.
Andy Murray famously never got to grips with Indian Wells, suffering a series of shock defeats here during his career.
Of the current generation, Alex Zverev – this year’s fourth seed – has never been past the last eight, making this his least-successful Masters tournament. And Alex de Minaur, a player you’d expect to do well on a sluggish hardcourt, is just 9-7 at this venue.
Am certainly happy to swerve those two when looking for potential alternatives.
Instead, I’ll turn to someone with a decent, if far from exceptional, record in Indian Wells.
TOMMY PAUL is in Sinner’s quarter of the draw and holds a 13-5 win-loss record here, making it his most successful Masters event.
I remember the American completely flat-batting talk about slow and fast courts, saying that, to him, it really doesn’t matter. He’s happy to adapt to whatever is laid down for him. That’s probably a good attitude to have.
He’ll bring good memories of a run to the semis here two years ago, while form so far in 2026 has been decent enough.
There was a semi-final appearance in Adelaide just before the Australian Open where he played well before running into eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz.
Since then, he’s made the final in Delray Beach which should set him up nicely for this event, one at which he’s beaten the likes of Zverev, Andrey Rublev, Hubert Hurkacz and Casper Ruud at in the past.
Like most players, his head-to-head record with Sinner doesn’t make for great reading – it’s 1-4, although two of the defeats, including the most recent, have come in a deciding set.
I just feel that Paul is the sort of player capable of living with Sinner if the Italian isn’t quite at his best and odds of 80/1 look worth a small play.
Indian Wells ATP Masters 1000 Main Draw Singles pic.twitter.com/rjVxKkOCP7
— Tennis Draws (@DrawsTennis) March 3, 2026
Quarter masters
Given the current nature of men’s tennis and its domination by the two aforementioned stars, this tournament looks an obvious one for us to look at the quarter betting.
These markets are usually priced up for the Masters 1000s and it gives a couple of markets in which neither Alcaraz nor Sinner is involved.
Q2 is led by Novak Djokovic, who again rolled back the years in Melbourne to reach the final before Alcaraz proved too good.
That’s now five Slams in a row where he’s made the semis or better but his Masters record is nowhere near as good – the Serb hasn’t won at this level since Paris in 2023.
I have no doubt he’s capable of challenging if he’s at the level he was in Melbourne but the fact is he’s not made the quarter-finals here in any of his five visits since he won the last of his five Indian Wells titles in 2016.
Such numbers fit with Djokovic’s own admission that only the Slams really matter to him now.
Taylor Fritz, another former champion, is also in this section. The 2022 winner has gone 5-1 against top-10 opponents here and possesses that big serve that has been effective in the desert over the years.
Still, I remain concerned about his knee tendinitis that has shown up again already in 2026 and I think the American can be taken on.
The man who I like at a big price here is FRANCISCO CERUNDOLO.
The Argentine made the quarter-finals here 12 months ago and should enjoy the ball sitting up in his strike zone, given he possesses one of the most powerful forehands in the game.
Cerundolo is back on the hardcourts having won a confidence-boosting clay title in Buenos Aires last month, while prior to that he reached the last 16 of the Australian Open.
Defending champion Jack Draper is a potential third-round foe but the Briton is in the early stages of a comeback following long-term injury. Throw in the big pressure of defending 1000 points this week – and knowing a rankings slide beckons – and I’d expect Cerundolo to progress from that one.
Djokovic could follow and then Fritz but I still think that the Argentine has potential in this quarter at 25s.
Meanwhile, Q3 also has no ‘Big Two’ involvement.
Its leading seed is Zverev, whose poor record in Indian Wells I’ve already highlighted.
Lorenzo Musetti is playing for the first time since his Australian Open injury so anyone backing him is punching in the dark to some extent.
As I wrote last week, Felix Auger-Aliassime prefers indoor tennis – and also conditions to be a bit faster – while Rublev remains rather worryingly stuck in the Middle East at time of writing and may well not make it to the start line.
Flavio Cobolli is a player who could step up.
I’m still gutted at mentioning him in last week’s Acapulco preview before deciding he was a little too short for my liking. He duly won the title.
Acapulco’s sluggish courts should be good preparation for Indian Wells but Cobolli is yet to win a match here which is a little off-putting.
Instead, I’m going to take a chance on MIOMIR KECMANOVIC at a big price.
The Serb is another who is adaptable in surface terms and he’s twice made quarter-finals here, most recently in 2022.
He was a semi-finalist in Acapulco last week. That followed on from a last-eight appearance in Dallas where Paul was among his victims. In short, form is pretty good.
Kecmanovic lost to Cobolli in those semis last week and the pair could meet again in round two here which isn’t great.
However, it was 6-4 in the third in Acapulco and that change of venue may just work in Kecmanovic’s favour given their contrasting records here.
In a quarter where I can see a lot of the big guns failing to match their seeding, let’s take a punt on Kecmanovic at 33/1.
Posted at 21:30 GMT on 03/03/26
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