Sunday's play at Indian Wells sees six of the top ten seeds open their campaigns at the first Masters 1000 event of the year.
Rafael Nadal returns to action in the second match on Stadium 1 against Leonardo Mayer. Nadal will look to play his way into form early this week after a long break after the Australian Open and a match with Mayer is a perfect way to start . He shouldn't be in any danger of losing this one and should be able to get back into a rhythm. I would see Nadal winning this one in two straight sets with the second one being considerably easier than the first.
Preceding that match on the main court is Juan Martin Del Potro who takes on the confident Marinko Matosevic, who made his first ever final on the tour last week in Delray Beach losing to Kevin Anderson. Despite that confidence it would take a monumental effort for him to defeat the in from Argentine. Delpo has won sixteen of his twenty matches this year and of his four losses three were against Roger Federer. This one should be a victory for Del Potro but he does have tendencies to drop sets early in tournaments as we seen against Llodra in Rotterdam and Mannarino at the Aussie Open so it's hard to say whether he will win in straight sets or not.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga will take to court looking to continue his 100% record over fellowe Frenchman Michael Llodra. Tsonga has won all four meetings between the two and won't want that to end here. Llodra's natural serve and volley game doesn't match up well with the power and athleticism of Tsonga. Tsonga has had a good start to the year and will see an opportunity to go far this week and will not lose this one. I would say Tsonga will win it, probably in straight sets.
Roger Federer opens his campaign against American Denis Kudla in what should prove an easy match for the Swiss star. The pair have never met and one would imagine that with the form Fed is in we won't be seeing an upset here. Federer has won titles in Rotterdam and Dubai since his loss to Nadal at the Australian Open and will be hoping to make it three titles in a row by winning here. Federer will relish the late start under lights in Florida and will look to impress the crowd as he gets his first win of the tournament. Federer to win in comfortable straight sets.
Another man in form is Spaniard David Ferrer who is the only man to have won three titles so far this year and his only loss of the year came to Novak Djokovic at the Aussie Open when he pushed the Serb to his limits before eventually succumbing to the class of Djokovic. He takes on the potentially tricky Gregor Dimitrov in his first match. 20 year old Bulgarian Dimitrov had been hotly tipped to make it to the top of the game and has been slowly progressing but not at a rate that would suggest a future top ten player. Dimitrov has lost three matches this year; 7-6 in third to Donald Young, 7-6 in the third to Kevin Anderson and 6-0 in a fifth set to Nicolas Almagro. Those results are very good for a young player but the form of Ferrer doesn't provide any optimism for Dimitrov. Ferrer will be looking to go far again this week and should win this one.
Other matches today include an intersting tie between Feliciano Lopez and Marcos Baghdatis. Both are very capable players and although Baghdatis is a much more accomplished player I think Lopez will reap the rewards from his serve on the American hard courts. In form Milos Raonic opens his campaign with a match against Carlos Berlocq. Raonic is due to meet Federer in the third round and he will be looking forward to that one to test his form against a top five. He won't want to lose early and ruin his chances of that meeting and so I think he'll win this one comfortably. I also expect Jurgen Melzer to defeat Thomas Bellucci, David Nalbandian will defeat 24th seed Marin Cilic, Tommy Haas will defeat 26th seed Marcel Granollers. There should also be wins for Fernando Verdasco, Xavier Malisse, Janko Tipsarevic, Aleksandr Dolgopolov, Nikolay Davydenko and Denis Istomin.
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