ATP Indian Wells Quarter-Final Tips

ATP Indian Wells Quarter-Final Tips: Markets accurate ahead of two competitive clashes

There are two quarter-finals taking place in the men's singles at Indian Wells today, and after a third straight winner, Dan Weston returns to discuss the Thursday schedule...

Schwartzman and Dimitrov shock in Wednesday's action

After a tough start to the tournament, we went three from three with Diego Schwartzman getting the better of Casper Ruud in straight sets, as a big-priced underdog. The Argentine won 57% of points in the match, dominating Ruud and this was a deserved underdog victory.

However, a bigger shock than this was Daniil Medvedev losing in three sets to Grigor Dimitrov, and Stefanos Tsitsipas almost went the same way, needing to win a crucial second-set tiebreak to take Alex De Minaur into a decider. Alexander Zverev eased past Gael Monfils, so it's your pick of Tsitsipas and Zverev at the top of the outright market now, with the Exchange market favouring Zverev at 2.56 currently.

Moving on to today's action, there's just two matches on the card with a split quarter-final schedule between today and tomorrow. Both matches look pretty competitive, but unfortunately there's not much in the way of value according to my model.

Schwartzman a marginal favourite for Norrie clash

Cameron Norrie 2.12 vs Diego Schwartzman 1.88: It's our hero from yesterday, Schwartzman, who is the marginal favourite to get the better of the final Brit in the draw, Cameron Norrie. My model completely agrees with the market line with Schwartzman having a very slightly better combined service/return points won percentage in the last 12 months on hard court.

Norrie, perhaps predictably, has an edge on serve over the return-orientated Schwartzman, but it's small, but also as unsurprisingly, Schwartzman has an edge on his forte, return. There's not an abundance between the duo though, and this is reflected in the market pricing which looks pretty accurate.

Norrie has battled through three back-to-back-to-back deciding sets and after the success of Emma Raducanu at the US Open, it would be fantastic to see a Brit in the semi-final of a Masters 1000, and he has a decent opportunity today to do so. However, he starts as a marginal underdog, and I think that's about right.

Dimitrov not far from value for meeting with Hurkacz

Grigor Dimitrov 2.60 vs Hubert Hurkacz 1.61: Dimitrov is another player who picked up a winner for us this week and his underlying data looks a bit better than his actual results over the last year or so - hence why my model will sometimes find him decent value.

However, today, I'd have liked to have seen him priced bigger for his clash against the Pole, Hurkacz, who has had a superb year reaching the semi-final of Wimbledon and winning the Miami Masters around six months ago. Anything over 2.75 or so would start to look pretty generous on Dimitrov, in my view, but the market price isn't quite there.

Perhaps bigger market pricing would have been the case if Dimitrov hadn't beaten a player of the reputation of the tournament favourite Medvedev yesterday, so the market is a little more cautious than it might have otherwise been. This looks like a fascinating match, with Hurkacz being the better server and Dimitrov the better returner based on my numbers, and again, looks a very competitive clash indeed.