Events / Sean Calvert / 13 March 2010 /

Sean Calvert looks ahead to this afternoon's matches at Indian Wells where the ever-resilient Nikolay Davydenko faces a match against the in-form Ernests Gulbis that could prove tricky for the experienced Russian.

The BNP Paribas Open begins in earnest this weekend with the men's second round and Saturday's matches have presented some handy betting opportunities.

Marin Cilic, Fernando Gonzalez and John Isner all look good for multiples backers, but the value could well lie with laying a couple of short priced favourites in the set betting markets.

Nikolay Davydenko has been in rare form over the last six months or so, but we've seen these sort of purple patches before from the Russian and they never last long.

A few months short of his 29th birthday, Davydenko has only reached one final in Masters Series events held in North America (Miami 2008) in his entire career. His best results have tended to come elsewhere and his record at Indian Wells is poor.

The world number six has a 4-5 win/loss mark in the Californian desert event and he has twice lost here to players ranked outside the world's top 150.

He also lost to 98th ranked Mardy Fish in the last 32 on his last visit here and Davy has never bettered the last 16, so an opening clash with the in-form Ernests Gulbis is not going to be easy.

Until the last month or so Gulbis was widely regarded as a talented but brittle performer, however results recently tell a different story.

The young Latvian reached the semis in Memphis before winning the Delray Beach title and he has now won nine out of his last 10 matches.

Davydenko and Gulbis have met before with the Russian coming out on top, but in the Masters Series event in Miami that Davy went on to win, their clash went to a final set breaker.

Gulbis has never been short on confidence and he'll be flying at the moment. Plus he's already had one win here, while Davy's last match ended in him retiring injured in Dubai so he's short of match practice.

It could be a tight one and laying the Davydenko 2-0 win at around [2.0] looks the call.

Elsewhere a similar bet should prove profitable in the Tomas Berdych v Florent Serra clash this evening.

The wildly hit-and-miss Czech is [1.9] to win 2-0 over an opponent who won the pair's only meeting so far and who hammered Alejandro Falla in round one.

It would take a very brave individual to have confidence in Berdych winning easily and a lay of 2-0 is recommended here.

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