After 3 winners from 3 bets in his last tennis column, Andy Schooler brings you his best bets for the first round of the ATP BNP Paribas Open 2025 in Indian Wells.
ATP BNP Paribas Open 2025: Round 1 Best Bets
Mariano Navone has established himself on the ATP Tour over the past 12 months but he’s done so by playing the majority of his tennis on clay. Off it, he’s very vulnerable, as his hardcourt record shows. He’s played 19 tour-level matches on the surface and won only five. Across those matches, he’s held serve only 72% of the time and broken 18%.
ATP BNP Paribas Open 2025: Mariano Navone v Learner Tien
The former number should be a worry against an in-form player, who is an excellent returner – Tien has won 29% of his return games so far in 2025, beating Daniil Medvedev en route to the last 16 of the Australian Open and then last week defeating Alex Zverev during a quarter-final run in Acapulco. That will have bedded him into sluggish hardcourts, which is what we’re expecting in Indian Wells, despite a change of surface from Plexipave to Laykold since the 2024 event.
In contrast, Navone has spent the last three weeks on his favoured clay in South America. I expect Tien’s hardcourt quality to pay dividends here and am happy to back him to win in straight sets.
ATP BNP Paribas Open 2025: David Goffin v Lorenzo Sonego
While I’m not someone who regularly backs players at 1.68, I do think there’s still juice in Sonego’s price here. I was expecting the Italian, who made the quarter-finals of the Australian Open, to be shorter here, going up against a player who has won just two of his eight matches in 2025. I suspect Goffin’s victory over Ben Shelton last week in Acapulco is being given too much weight.
Sonego has struggled for wins since his Melbourne heroics but there’s an asterisk applied to that statement. In each of his last two tournaments, he’s lost to the eventual champion – Ugo Humbert in Marseille and Stefanos Tsitsipas in Dubai. Both were still fairly close matches and while Sonego struggled on serve in those contests, I’d expect him to enjoy more success against the Goffin delivery in this one.
He certainly did in 2024, winning both of the pair’s meetings, one of which came on a hardcourt – Sonego a 6-3 6-2 victor in Winston-Salem. I think he wins again.
ATP BNP Paribas Open 2025: R1 Best Bets
Learner Tien to beat Mariano Navone 2-0 @ 1.85 with kwiff
Lorenzo Sonego to beat David Goffin @ 1.68 with kwiff
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