Indian Wells Previews: Men's Semifinals

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—Did you know the Big 4 haven’t all been in the semifinals of a tournament together in three years? They were one point away yesterday, before Milos Raonic came back to beat Rafael Nadal in their three-hour quarterfinal. Still, we’ve got four players in the Top 6 in action on Saturday. Here’s a look at what we might see from them.

The recent past is not Murray’s friend here: Djokovic has beaten him five straight times, and in eight of their last nine meetings.

Murray is very aware of all this. When he lost to Novak at the Australian Open, he brought up those dismal numbers, and they almost certainly contributed to his freakout over the last two sets of their final. Djokovic says he beats Murray because he feels that at some point his physical superiority eventually spells the difference. If he can stay with Murray early, he has said, he believes he can wear him down.

You might think that Djokovic wouldn’t be quite so confident of this in a two-of-three-set match, but he’s been especially dominant against Murray in the shorter format: The last time Murray beat him in two-of-three was at the London Olympics in 2012. As we saw in the the match between Rafael Nadal and Milos Raonic yesterday, winning streaks are made to be broken, and Murray is certainly capable of breaking this one—he’s had an efficient week, and dropped just one set. But Djokovic, the defending champion, hasn’t dropped any sets at Indian Wells, and he’s coming off a nice two-day rest after Bernie Tomic withdrew from their quarterfinal. Winner: Djokovic

Speaking of rest, Raonic could probably use a little more than he’s going to get before this one—there’s nothing like facing Roger Federer less than 24 hours after beating Rafael Nadal in a three-hour match on a hot day.

It only gets worse for Raonic from there. He’s 1-8 against Federer, who needed just 68 minutes to finish off a subpar Tomas Berdych on Friday. Federer had everything going against Berdych—21 winners, 11 errors, 13 of 14 at net, and no break points faced. He made a couple of mistakes while trying to serve out the first set, but he quickly got himself back on track with a timely foray to the net. And while Raonic’s serve is scary, the man who faced it today thinks Federer will handle the challenge just fine.

“Bigger difference with Roger,” Nadal said, “especially on this surface, is he has a great serve, too.” Winner: Federer