ATP Mutua Madrid Masters Betting: Murray to master Mayer in Madrid

7May 2013

ATP Masters 1000

The big names make their entrances in Madrid today including Andy Murray, who takes on Florian Mayer. Sean Calvert talks us through the best bets..

Monday's wager at the Mutua Madrid Open ended up being rather unfortunate when Guillermo Garcia-Lopez was unable to take his two set point opportunities against John Isner.

Needing just one point to win a bet and then losing is never a pleasant experience and even more galling when the anti-tennis of Isner prevails with a couple of well-timed aces, but clearly I'm not bitter about it.

Tuesday's play at La Caja Magica sees Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer makes their debuts in this year's tournament and for Federer it's his first match of the season on the red dirt.

The Swiss enjoys the quicker, lower bouncing conditions at altitude here in Madrid though and he shouldn't be posed too many problems by opponent Radek Stepanek today.

Djokovic faces a tricky match first up against Grigor Dimitrov and a lay of the Serb 2-0 at 1.30 is certainly worthy of consideration if Dimitrov can repeat the form he showed against Rafa Nadal in Monte-Carlo.

Murray takes to the court at around 4pm UK time this afternoon and faces the unpredictable talents of flaky German Florian Mayer, who can be anything on any given day.

The Brit will be desperate to do well in Madrid this week after his humbling by Stan Wawrinka in Monte-Carlo and today's match-up should suit him with Mayer relying largely on junk to win his matches.

When he's on form Mayer can pose problems for the best, but he's so inconsistent that he's very hard to predict accurately. He beat Rafa Nadal in the Shanghai Masters a couple of years ago and then lost 6-2, 6-4 to Feliciano Lopez the next round, which says it all about Mayer.

He's played Murray once in the past and that was on slow clay in Rome when Mayer won the opener 6-1 and then lost the next two by the same scoreline, which is so Mayer.

Murray didn't play on the infamous blue clay here in Madrid last year and he's never been past the last eight on clay at La Caja Magica and his last match here was a straight sets loss to Thomaz Bellucci in 2011.

He knows he needs to get a lot better on clay to even figure in the shake up in these tournaments, but today should be a good opportunity for him to erase the memory of Monte-Carlo with a routine win.

The Scot should be able to win this one in spite of a 4.5 game handicap in the German's favour at around 1.58.