Anderson to continue dominance over Nieminen

11Mar 2013

ATP Masters 1000

It's not been a vintage week for Sean Calvert so far at Indian Wells, but in today's third round matches he's backing Kevin Anderson to ease past Jarkko Nieminen..

The slow start to the BNP Paribas Open continued on Sunday after a capitulation from Albert Ramos against Marin Cilic.

The Spaniard was the better player in set one of their encounter and didn't face a break point, winning 100% on his first serve until the tie break. Ramos came back from 2-6 down to level, but after then losing that breaker he collapsed in set two.

At least my suggestion of backing Evgeny Donskoy +6.5 games against Andy Murray was successful, as the young Russian stunned the Scot by taking the first set of their match before fading.

Monday's schedule at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden sees Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal in action again and both look to have relatively comfortable passages through to the next round against Ivan Dodig and Leo Mayer respectively.

Ernests Gulbis looks too short at 1.48 against Andreas Seppi, as he's due a dip soon after a lot of tennis and I don't trust this latest renaissance from the Latvian, as we've seen it too many times in the past.

Jerzy Janowicz showed his best form of the season in beating David Nalbandian and has a puncher's chance against Richard Gasquet at 3.4 if he repeats and Gasquet is too negative.

At a similar sort of price Lleyton Hewitt could trouble Stan Wawrinka in the late match, but in the opening match of the day Kevin Anderson should be too strong for Jarkko Nieminen.

Anderson stunned David Ferrer in round two and after coming back from elbow surgery only last month the big South African is a dangerous opponent for anyone with his power on these slow courts.

He certainly should be overpowering Nieminen today, as he has done in their previous meetings and slow, outdoor hard is not the sort of surface that the Finn prefers.

Jarkko did produce a fine result in his last match, but it was against a rusty Fernando Verdasco, who has been struggling and the scoreline is not really an accurate representation of the Finn's powers on outdoor hard.

This is the first time that Nieminen has been past the second round of a Masters 1000 event on outdoor hard since Cincinnati way back in 2007 and his recent record at both Indian Wells and Miami is poor.

Anderson will surely win this, but 1.48 is a touch low, so I'm happy to take a chance on the 2-0 Anderson win at 2.18.