Just doing a quick preview of today’s men semifinal action at Indian Wells. Rafael Nadal has certainly been the star of the event and looks like the Nadal of old, i.e. brimming with confidence and playing at the top of his game. He’s had to this week to get through John Isner and then Tomas Berdych both of whom were playing great ball.
Nadal takes on Ivan Ljubicic who he is currently 5-1 lifetime against with their last meeting being in Shanghai. Although Ljubicic has had a great event with wins over Novak Djokovic and Juan Monaco, I expect the Croat’s run to end with Nadal winning in two quick sets.
The other semi is a bit of a surprise as everyone expected a Roger Federer/Andy Murray rematch. Instead it’s Andy Roddick taking on Robin Soderling who pulled the upset over Murray yesterday. These guys haven’t played since 2008 and it’s the first time they’ve met on an outdoor hard court. Even though this court is playing a tad slow, the conditions and crowd favor Roddick so long as he keeps up his stellar serving from previous matches.
Soderling, however, has been serving great all week too, and with the Murray win, he should be extremely confident today. If it becomes a serving battle that goes into tiebrekers, I favor Roddick. But I don’t think Roddick will be able to hang with the Swede in long baseline rallies and I am actually picking Soderling to get through in two sets.
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