The third day of the ATP World Tour Finals.

The first two days presented great matched with opportunities for both pre-match and live betting.

The match I want to talk about today is the match-up between Soderling and Ferrer.

I'll start up by saying that these two players have already met 5 times this season. The first meeting was at Wimbledon where Soderling won in 5 sets. The second meeting was in Bastad, and Soderling won again in 3 sets. Their third match-up was in Beijing and it was Ferrer's first win over Soderling this season with a 6-2 6-4 scoreline. The 4th match-up was at the ATP 1000's level in Shanghai where Soderling won again 7-5 6-4. Their last meeting this season took place in Valencia and Ferrer managed to come back from a one set deficit and won 3-6 6-3 6-3. From all the 5 matches they have played this season only some are relevant for today's match.

First of all I have to say that my pick will be for Soderling here. The context in which this match is played is different from all the others played this season. This is a top level event, and if I were to choose which player is most comfortable in this position I would certainly pick Soderling. Of course, Ferrer is a great player and is most of the time very consistent, but he is not a top 8 player (top 20 player yes, but top 8 is stretching it). Ferrer seemed a little bit overwhelmed in the first match, where he lost to Federer 6-1 6-4, and what's worst for Ferrer is that Federer just played at an ok level to get the win. Soderling lost his first match as well, but it was against Andy Murray, and that type of match-up will never favor Soderling.

Also the fatigue factor will play a role here. Ferrer struggled during the last tournament in Paris, and that is to be understood, as it was a long season, and taking in consideration the fact that Ferrer is a "clay court" played certainly doesn't help his cause. On the other side Soderling won that tournament and I also noticed some improvements for Soderling as far as the mental game goes.

To sum it up, in order to Ferrer to win here he will have to play a consistent tennis, and be able to pass the Swede at least 80% of the time Soderling comes to the net ( something that I don't see happening ). Another factor to take in consideration is that Ferrer is "clay courter" which means that he likes to play with more top-spin and doesn't hit the ball all that flat (which is understandable taking in consideration this height 1.85m), but this is not a clay court and what that means is that the ball will most of the time be returned in Soderling's hitting zone, which will allow the Swede to be the more aggressive player.

And one more thing I'd like to add is that I don't really like betting on Soderling, in fact I like betting against him, as I consider him to be a over achiever, but today I don't see Ferrer getting the win, so a 5 units bet on Soderling at 1.53.