INDIAN WELLS BETTING: ANDY MURRAY TAKES ON NICOLAS ALMAGRO

Popular British bookmaker William Hill has rolled out over 20 different markets on the Andy Murray vs. Nicolas Almagro clash in the last 16 of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, California. If the markets were taken at face value, Murray has the match in the bag. He is the clear favourite, trading at 1/7 odds. Meanwhile, Almagro is listed at significantly large 4/1 odds, a price-point that is outside the range where an underdog is perceived to have a real shot at masterminding the upset.
Whether an upset is conceivable or not is beside the point now because the grounds at Indian Wells have proven to be a top-players' Waterloo, you cannot look ahead without taking in all the casualties from Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic to Nikolay Davydenko, Marin Cilic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga – to name a few.
The women’s game wasn’t spared from the carnage either when Svetlana Kuznetsova, Maria Sharapova, Elena Dementieva, Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin were some of the many to have been run into the ground.
When upsets spread like an epidemic through a tournament no player is immune, not even Andy Murray. He is the choice player to win outright in many respects, dictated by his superior ranking, seeding and success at this level as such. That does not mean he will win.
Murray and Almagro are 1-1 lifetime in head-to-heads; granted Almagro only ever beat Murray on clay, a surface that favours the Spaniard wholeheartedly. Surface edge is not everything in this match and I would add that Almagro’s hard court game has improved leaps and bounds. He is not a hardcourt guru but then again, he doesn't need to be. He only needs to be better than Murray for the duration of a match.
What I believe makes Almagro a tempting underdog though are the intangibles. After watching some of his matches this season, especially his clash against Tsonga at the Aussie Open which was a brilliant, nerve-wracking, edge-of-your-seat-I don’t-know-who-is-going-to-win, five-set epic, I was impressed. He lost that match but what he took away was a great lesson in clutch matches and confidence.
His victories over Ivo Karlovic and James Blake at Indian Wells this week are case-and-point when he survived clutch situations to emerge victorious. Almagro is playing like a player that believes. Belief can be potent.
If I were to compare Murray, as he is right now post Aussie Open final disappointment, he doesn’t seem as confident as he used to be. Not really strutting his stuff out there is he now. And if I were to nitpick, his wins haven’t been spectacles of domination by a heavyweight over a lightweight. He just barely scraped by Michael Russell, a performance which if you ask me shows how grievously his standard oscillates from match-to-match.
I honestly believe Murray needs to be a tad bit worried. Knowing Murray, he has a tendency to underestimate his opponents. Should he do so against Almagro, might he rue his tactics? Methinks, yes.