NOVAK DJOKOVIC BEGINS ABN AMRO CAMPAIGN

Novak Djokovic swaggers into the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament the newly minted world No.2. Djokovic ended up on the positive end of the ranking shuffle when Rafael Nadal forfeited his Aussie Open points by retiring from his quarterfinal clash against Andy Murray, and at the same tournament, a few days later, Murray finished runner-up to Roger Federer. That Djokovic played a ridiculous amount of matches last season also helped beef up his point tally ahead of the Aussie Open. What all this means for Djokovic is that he will be under a lot of pressure to defend his new ranking. It will be a lot easier to overlook the dubious ranking ascent if he were to win a title, any title early on in the season. Rotterdam looks like the perfect place to to serve up such a title with only Nikolay Davydenko and Robin Soderling as the next top ten threats in the draw.
Djokovic is the short-odds on favourite in the market to clean up in Rotterdam and he is well backed to get his campaign off to a good start against an unheralded Sergiy Stakhovsky. is trading Djokovic at an impressive 1/16 to win outright while Stakhovsky weighs in at 7/1.
Djokovic to win in straight sets is the popular outcome and is offered at 1/6. Similarly, Stakhovsky to win in straights is the least popular outcome, offered at 16/1. A three setter in favour of Djokovic carries an 11/2 price tag and could be a good bet considering his last outing against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, a disheartening five-set loss, might have shaken his confidence a tad. Stakhovsky’s to win 2-1 is trading at a large 14/1 price tag. This outcome is almost as unthinkable as a straight set win by the Ukrainian. He would have to come up with some real special tennis to accomplish the feat. Few can boast of doing so against the Serbian starlet.
If you are backing Djokovic for the straight sets win, odds on the number of sets in the match is offered at 1/7. Better value is the three setter however at 4/1.
Score casting offers a whole slew of options from Djokovic winning the first set 6-0 at 18/1 to winning 6-2 and 6-4 at 7/2.  Stakhovsky has a decent serve game so if he can hold serve he can make this match more competitive than some might think. Taking Djokovic to win in a first set by a 7-5 score pays 11/1 while a tiebreak at 7-6 pays 8/1.Stakhovsky to hijack the first set pays and incredible 33/1 on a 7-5 score and a more reasonable 18/1 on the tiebreak.
Other markets offered on this interesting encounter include second set Score cast, total Games Odd/Even, odds on each to win a set or not to win a set and whole lot more. .