With no major upsets so far at the  2010 Indian Wells ATP 1000 masters event, there has been little change in the odds for the outright winner of the event.

The top 4 ranked players remain the 4 favorites to win the event though no.2 in the world Djokovic is  the 4th favorite and no.4 in the world Andy Murray the 2nd favorite. Nadal is the third favorite in the bookmakers eyes whilst as usual Roger Federer is still the man to beat.

As usual you will get the best odds at Betfair, in some cases these can be considerable higher than the average bookmakers odds. For example the odds of Andy Roddick winning in Indian wells is on average 12/1 across the bookmakers whilst at Betfair you will get odds of 19/1.

The third round draw of the first masters series event of 2010 is now complete with all of the top 4 safely negotiating their way through their second round match.

In fact all of the top 10 with exception of 8th seed Marin Cilic safely negotiated their way through to the last 32, though Nikolay Davydenko has subsequently pulled out giving his third round opponent, Viktor Troicki a bye through to the fourth round.

In the top half of the draw Andy Murray will face American veteran Michael Russel for the first time in his career whilst Roger Federer takes on comeback player Marcos Baghdatis, who has risen over 100 places in the rankings over the last 9 months.

In the bottom half of the draw 2nd seed Novak Djokovic takes Germany’s Philip Kohlschreiber and 3rd seed Rafael Nadal takes on another back from injury player Mario Ancic.

The thrid round matches will take place today (15th march) and tomorrow, with the bottom half of the draw up first today –  Nadal, Djokovic and Verdasco the top 10 players in action. The headline match today will the all American affair between the 15th seed John Isner and 17th seed Sam Querrey. These two players are the current American no.2 and no.3 and separated by just 2 places in the rankings.

12 months ago world number 4 Andy Murray made his return to the ATP tour at Indian Wells after a brief break due to injury. He perhaps surprisingly made it all the way to the final for it being his first tournament back and perhaps more surprisingly was that he only managed to take just three games off of Rafael Nadal in that final.

The record books only carry the score and don’t include the fact that the final was a freak wind-afflicted match that played into the heavy top spin game of Nadal.

Murray made his 2010 return to the stadium court in this years event with a scrappy 6-4 6-4 straight sets win over Italian Andreas Seppi bringing the Scots winning record against the Italian to 3-1.

Murray dropped serve twice though broke Seppi four times from seven opportunities and put 20 winners past the Italian, after the match Murray’s spoke to reporters.

It was a pretty scrappy match today, Even though it was relatively comfortable, still some tight moments. I’ve obviously started the year well in Australia, and you remember the feelings you had there, You’re not necessarily hitting the ball as well as you have been in practice. You don’t know if it’s tension. You’re just a little bit surprised, maybe. But, saying that, when you haven’t played for a long time, you have to expect not to play your best the first match out. I’m sure next round out I’ll feel fine.”

Andy Murray threw away a 1 set lead as he crashed out of the Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells. He went down 2-6 7-5 6-3 to Germany’s number 2 Tommy Haas.

The British number 1 had started brightly, breaking in the third and fifth games to take the opening set relatively comfortably.

But it was Murray’s old problems on his serve that haunted him. At the start of the second set his serve simply deserted him and Haas stormed to a 4-1 lead. With Murray though whenever his serve is misfiring, he always has a chance with his great ability on return and indeed Murray did recovered the break, the joy was short lived as Hass broke again to level.

Murray then missed on five break points on the Hass serve in the decider. He would rue those misses as Haas broke him penultimate game to love, before the 29 year old from Hamburg in Germany served out to take the final set 6-3.

The 20-year-old berated himself afterwards, saying:

If I had played a bit more aggressively in the third set – like I did in the first set – then I would have won the match….I still think I was good enough to win the match but I didn’t.

Murray’s on court attitude was slightly better today compared with yesterday, though it was after a large scream and vent of frustration at losing a break point to go 4-3 up that he then went on to lose the next service game to love. After the match Murray said,

It was better than yesterday, that’s for sure…I got annoyed a couple of times but that was more because I was playing a bit defensive and wasn’t quite finding a way to get on the offensive in the third set….But the mindset was way better today than it was yesterday. I was much calmer at the start of the match.

Tommy Hass will now face Roger Federer in the quarter finals.

Update : Tommy Hass has recently been recovering from a shoulder injury and will now actually miss his quarter final match due to injury

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Andy Murray came through a tough third round match against big serving 6ft 10in Croatian Ivo Karlovic. The young Scot won in three sets 7-6 (9-7) 6-7 (3-7) 6-3 and now faces Tommy Hass in the fourth round on Wednesday.

Murray beat Hass last year in the quarter finals of the same event, but a victory against Hass will set up a likely quarter final match with world number 1 Roger Federer, who Murray beat in first round in Dubai a few weeks ago.

Murray was down a break in both of the first two sets, before breaking back and levelling to force a tie break. Murray won the first 9-7 but he let Karlovic boss the second tie break and the big Croat won it comfortably 7-3.

In the third set Murray raced to a 3-0 lead, but was pegged back before Murray again broke in the eighth game and then served out the next game to win 6-3.

At moments in the match Murray seemed furious with himself as his form was not quite up to his usual level. Though it shows his eagerness to win, getting angry with himself always seems make the situation worse and sees his form dip even further. After the match Andy Murray said,

I was disappointed with my attitude during the match, I was getting really angry and I haven’t done that this year…..I was just in a bad frame of mind and you can sometimes snap out of it, but when you’re playing someone who is as frustrating to play against as him, it’s difficult…I was just happy with the way I came through in the end because I was not focusing as well as I should have been.