Nadal, according to the odds, is expected to walk all over Ancic.
Rafael Nadal and Mario Ancic are set to meet in the third round of the ATP Indian Wells event, the BNP Paribas Open. Nadal has come in as a huge favorite in the match as Ancic, though a former top 10 player, has not been active on tour in quite some time.
Here are the odds for the match with bet365:
Nadal to win, -1600 (1/16)
Ancic to win, +700 (7/1)
Ancic is currently ranked 694th in the world at the moment although that will change drastically even with just a third round appearance in Indian Wells. He is a tough player to judge right now because his ranking has absolutely no insight into his level of play. Ancic has missed tons of time on tour in recent years and that has affected his ranking. He has been to semifinals of Wimbledon before and he has also been ranked in the top 10.
The tough thing with Ancic is that you can't really place him anywhere in the rankings at the moment. So far in 2010 he has losses to players that cannot even be described as fringe tour players as Gilles Muller, Dawid Olejniczak, and Mikhail Kukushkin have all defeated Ancic.
However at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells Ancic has an insightful victory as he defeated Julien Benneteau in the second round. Benneteau was the 31 seed in Indian Wells and the match was a 3 setter so let's just take that at face value and assume that Ancic, whatever his ranking may be, is actually a top 50 player who just needs time to improve his ranking following a period of idleness.
Head to head Nadal owns a 3-1 record against Ancic and the Spaniard should be clear to advance in Indian Wells. While Nadal's game has regressed in the last 10 months he still isn't dropping matches to players outside of the top 10. Our recommendation is to take Nadal to win in straight sets using bet365's set betting feature.
The price for that event has been set at -450 (2/9) and it has much better value than betting Nadal straight up at -1600.
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