An interesting match in today's night session at the BNP Paribas at Indian Wells.

The world no.2 Roger Federer will take on Fernando Verdasco, a player in a great form lately.

Most of the time when Federer was offered odds above 1.20 i would take them as in most cases they represented value.But today, in this specific match i will have to go with Verdasco.

The way I see it, the key of this match is the way the two players serve. And while Verdasco has been showing some incredible numbers, managing to put a lot of first serves in, Federer has been having problems in that department during the last year. At the ground stokes I would still rate Federer as the better player, but during the last year we did see moments in which Federer's main weapon (the forehand) has let him down. On the other side, I would not rate Verdasco's ground stokes as something incredible, but lately they have been very consistent and are similar to those of Nadal. In fact, looking at Verdasco's style of play this year, you have to say that he has stolen a bit from Nadal.

As most of you might know, Federer has had a back injury in the last month which forced him to pull out of the Dubai tournament and out of the Davis Cup matches. Now, if you ask me these back problems are the main reason why the had such a "bad" (by Federer's standards)  season last year. If you have back problems you can't serve well.

So, on the one side we have Federer which in my opinion is in a physical state that has a few question marks, and on the other side we have Ferdasco whom is in the form of his life.

Federer already had some problems yesterday with Fernando Gonzalez, losing a set, and that is enough for me to go further and state that Ferdasco can go and win more than a set.

My pick here is Fernando Verdasco to win at 3.75 with Stan James.Small stake.

If you want a much safer pick you can go with Ferdasco (+3.5 games) which you could win even if Ferdasco fails to win.The odds for this pick are around 2.00, which is really good.