Berdych served as spoiler at Wimbledon when he beat Roger Federer in the quarterfinals. He was hoping to do it again against Nadal. Initially, it didn't seem like it would go that direction with Nadal dominating the first set with a 6-2 win. Nadal's focus dropped some as Berdych also played more aggressive tennis and
The weather was windy and Simon wasn't sure he wanted to be on the court. Simon had given Federer all he could handle in a five set match in Australia, but today, he went down two breaks and said he couldn't play. Apparently Fed's previous match against Rochus started very late, but that was 2
Andy Roddick gets plenty of criticism. Americans, after all, have been spoiled by the success of Americans. In the 1970s, there was Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe. Then, it was Jimmy Connors, then John McEnroe. Just when Americans were fretting that there was no one to replace these two icons. American tennis reached its zenith
Sports fans have short memories. They believe the results of the last week should matter more than the results of a year ago. Alas, the men's tennis rankings say otherwise. The ranking is a culmination of a year's work. If you played fantastic a year ago, your rankings will reflect this. Part of Soderling's lofty
Still the early rounds going on. Nadal, who rarely loses to fellow Spaniards (although he did lose to Lopez at Queen's last year and to Garcia-Lopez in Bangkok--something about that Lopez name, I guess) faced fellow lefty, Feliciano Lopez. This was a routine 6-3, 6-3 win. Federer had a tougher match, requiring a 6-4, 7-6
Didn't expect this. Robin Soderling didn't have a particularly good Indian Wells. He lost to Phillipp Kohlschreiber in the 3rd round. This was one indication that Soderling wasn't on top of his game and that del Potro would have a good shot of beating Soderling. Before del Potro was injured, he used to play Soderling
Last year, about this time, Roddick was having the best three weeks he's had since, oh, say, Wimbledon. Despite the usual suspects of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray playing both Indian Wells and Miami, all of them were upset somewhat early. Roddick manage to slip through the draw and reach the finals of Indian Wells,
Last year, shortly after his loss to Roger Federer, Andy Murray was in full-mope mode. He had not played much in the weeks afterwards. He felt he was ready to take that next step, finally get the monkey off his back. He was in his second Slam final, playing good tennis to get to this
There were some records that were going to be broken at some point. On the one hand, Rafa had done very well at Indian Wells in odd years, winning in 2009 and 2007. He had also been 5-0 over Djokovic in finals, a fact that apparently he didn't know this head-to-head result when it was
This year, the top singles players came out in force to play doubles. Rafael Nadal and Marc Lopez were the defending champs and came back to defend. Roger Federer was teamed up with Stan Wawrinka for the first time in a tournament setting since they won the Olympics in 2008. Novak Djokovic paired up with
