Indian Wells Monday Wrap-up

Even though Monday's action in Indian Wells isn't quite finished yet (Querrey and Isner still have to play), I'm going to go ahead and write my wrap-up. This is the disadvantage of tennis actually taking place in your time zone, but it is the only one.

There was some great action today, with some minor upsets, some gutsy performances, a couple real dominations, and even a few chokes. The worst choke of the day belongs to German Phillip Kohlschreiber, who failed to capitalize on the fact that Djokovic simply did not show up for the second set of the match. After being up a set and a break, Djokovic went walkabout and lost eight games in a row. The Serb evened it up, but then got down 0-40 on serve while down 4-5. Kohlschreiber failed to take advantage of any, and then lost the match in a third-set tiebreak. A real escape for the Djoker, who has only decided to show up about 60% of the time for his last two matches.

Rafael Nadal, on the other hand, looked imperious in his match against Mario Ancic. Nothing that Super Mario could do in that one.

Strangely, there wasn't much that Fernando Verdasco could do today, either. In what was not necessarily a surprising result, Tomas Berdych just decimated the Spaniard love and three. They had some tough matches in the past, so the manner of Berdych's victory was a bit of a shock. It sounds like Hot Sauce may have been having some trouble with a new racket, but it wasn't just his racket that was bothering him today, it was his big-hitting Czech opponent.

The other two upsets of the day were Juan Monaco over Juan Carlos Ferrero, in a tight three-setter, and then Guillermo Garcia-Lopez over Tomaz Bellucci, who won the first and then kind of lost his focus in the last two sets, having a lot more trouble hitting his big forehands and unable to keep his first-serve percentage over fifty. In fact, it was 39% in the second set!

There were a handful of upsets on the women's side, as well. Carla Suarez-Navarro followed up her win over Kuznetsova by beat Aggie Szavay. Azarenka also lost, rather meekly in fact, to Maria Martinez-Sanchez, so it was a good day for hyphenated Spaniards. Shahar Peer beat Flavia Pennetta in three as well, but the upset of the day was Alisa Kleybanova over Kim Clijsters in the third set tiebreak. Clijsters really should have come away with this match, she just made a few too many errors at key moments. Kleybanova is looking fitter than ever and is on quite a hot streak right now.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, the marquee match is definitely Roger Federer versus Marcos Baghdatis, which could be a thriller. Also, keep an eye out for Petrova-Wozniacki and Radwanska-Bartoli. On paper, the women's matches are better than the men's tomorrow, but as usual, anything could happen.

I hope that the court that has Dudi Sela and Tommy Robredo has cameras, because that could be a fun match, even if it lacks star power. Lopez-Soderling should feature a ton of aces, and Thiemo De Bakker gets another shot at Andy Roddick, after falling to him this year at the Aussie Open.

Well, I'm going to head to bed and see if I can watch Querrey and Isner through to the finish line.