Indian Wells Masters Day 3 Tips: Cressy should have too much for Tabilo

• Big names enter tournament on Day 3

• Cressy looks the day's best bet

• Wu has a chance as the underdog

Rublev most vulnerable among the big names

Big names get their Indian Wells event started tonight and there's plenty of them in action, including Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev, Andrey Rublev, Casper Ruud and Stefanos Tsitsipas, so there's likely to be plenty of high quality tennis action from 1900 UK time.

Most of those big names are strong favourites to emerge victorious tonight, although Rublev is more vulnerable at 1.548/15 against the rapidly improving Czech player, Jiri Lehecka. Indeed, Lehecka has already beaten Rublev this season - last month in Doha - at a similar market price to tonight, and it was a deserved victory, winning 53% of points in the match.

He served well that day, restricting Rublev to 26% of return points won, and a similar serving display is likely to be key to an underdog victory here.

Tough to see anything but victory for Cressy

Another player likely to need to serve well to win tonight will be Maxime Cressy, with the big-server looking like a solid favourite at 1.608/13 for his meeting with clay-courter Alejandro Tabilo.

On his preferred clay, Tabilo hasn't achieved a great deal this year so far at Challenger level, losing to some pretty mediocre opposition overall, and while the slower conditions at Indian Wells will be more to his liking than Cressy, it would be a surprise to me if Tabilo impressed.

It's also with noting that Cressy defeated Tabilo pretty easily on clay a couple of years ago in conditions which will have favoured the man from the Dominican Republic, so it's tough to see anything but a victory here for Cressy, who has pushed some pretty strong opposition in three-setters of late, and reached the final of Montpellier indoors.

Bautista-Agut favourite to defeat Ruusuvuori

At a fairly similar price of 1.705/7, Roberto Bautista-Agut is favourite against the Finn, Emil Ruusuvuori, having eased to victory several years ago at the US Open in straight sets in their only previous meeting. 2023 has been fairly mixed for Bautista-Agut so far, with a couple of losses to low-ranked players when heavy pre-match favourite, but he did reach the final in Adelaide outdoors, and the fourth round of the Australian Open.

I had big hopes for Ruusuvuori when he broke through from the Challenger Tour, but he hasn't been able to replicate my expectations so far, although there's still time at the age of 23 for him to do so. He's 5-9 since reaching the semi-finals of ATP Stockholm, with his wins coming as favourite. The wily veteran, Bautista-Agut, should have too much tonight.

Wu with chances against Davidovich Fokina

Finally, there's what I call a high variance match on the schedule between wild-card Yibing Wu, and 23rd seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. The Spaniard is a slight favourite at 1.824/5, but has a pretty sizeable gap between his ceiling and floor levels, so it's tricky to know how he will fare tonight as favourite.

Wu picked up a shock first ATP title in Dallas last month, beating John Isner, Taylor Fritz and Denis Shapovalov among others, and reached the final of the Cleveland Challenger earlier in the month as well.

He comes into the event in pretty good form, has strong numbers in Challengers over the last year or so, and I think an underdog victory is certainly very possible here - I'm interested to see how Wu progresses this season, with a breakthrough into the top 50 likely to happen sooner rather than later.