There will be two new ATP Masters 1000 quarter-finalists at the BNP Paribas Open – Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic and Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz.

But amidst the change, familiar faces remain. Five-time champion Roger Federer advanced to his 13^th Indian Wells quarter-final on Wednesday afternoon, 6-1, 6-4, taking advantage of a slow start from top Brit and 23^rd seed Kyle Edmund in their first meeting.

“He didn’t have the best start, so that cost him the first set. Second set, it was definitely better. I think he probably struggled throughout a little bit. He never really got going. Conditions are tough with the glare, and the jump of the ball is sometimes hard to find the rhythm and timing,” Federer said.

“Being able to belt the ball like he does needs either a good start or good conditions, and he didn’t quite find that. I’m sure I profited a little bit from it, but again, I was able to keep him uncomfortable throughout the match.

“He’s got everything in the game. It’s just a matter of keeping improving, keep plugging away, and then he will make big results again. He knows that.”

The 37-year-old Federer will experience another first as he and Hurkacz will meet for the first time in the quarter-finals. The 22-year-old Pole, who competed at the 2018 Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan, beat #NextGenATP Canadian Denis Shapovalov 7-6(3), 2-6, 6-3.

“I enjoy it,” Federer said of playing guys for the first time. “Hurkacz… He’s also up and coming, so that’s fun. Kyle, the same thing. I have never played him before other than practice. It’s nice to see what they have in the matches and really get a sense how much more we will see of them. For me, at a top level, I like it that I’m not playing the same guys every single week.”

Edmund, meanwhile, will want to have another go at the 27-time Masters 1000 champion. The Brit double faulted twice to start his first service game, and unfortunately for the 23-year-old, the nervy beginning was an omen.

Federer broke twice in the opening set, and Edmund failed to convert any of his three break chances to get back on serve in the third game. Federer pounded Edmund’s backhand, and the Antwerp titlist was stuck trying to rally from the baseline with Federer.

As Rod Laver, two-time champion Pete Sampras and tournament owner Larry Ellison looked on, Edmund settled into the match, but Federer saved four more break points in the second, going seven for seven for the match.

Rafael Nadal was large and in charge on Wednesday at the BNP Paribas Open, dismissing Filip Krajinovic 6-3, 6-4 to reach the Indian Wells quarter-finals for the first time in three years.

The three-time champion’s weight of shot kept the World No. 113 anchored several feet behind the baseline and stretched the Serb wide in the court. The 33-time ATP Masters 1000 champion broke in the second game of the first set to race to a 3-0 lead. Facing his first break point of the tournament, Nadal dropped serve for 3-2 but immediately broke back. 

In the second set Nadal broke in the third game and dictated thereafter, never giving his opponent an opening back into the match.

Having dropped a combined six games in his first two wins over Jared Donaldson and Diego Schwartzman, Nadal wasn’t fully satisfied after conceding seven games today. “I probably played a little bit worse today than yesterday. Maybe because of the conditions, [it was] windier out there today. But in general terms [it’s] been a positive victory again. Happy the way I played.”

Nadal is now one win away from keeping his part of the bargain to set a blockbuster semi-final with Roger Federer, who plays his fourth-round match later today against Britain’s Kyle Edmund.

Although World No. 2 Nadal is more than 3,500 points behind No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the ATP Rankings, should he win the title he will overtake the Serb in first place in the ATP Race To London, a predictor of the year-end ATP Rankings.

Nadal next faces the winner of Russian Karen Khachanov and American John Isner.

Did You Know?
Nadal reached the Indian Wells semi-finals or better for eight straight years between 2006 and 2013, when he won the last of his three BNP Paribas Open crowns.

The ATP has announced the release of its 2020 ATP Tour calendar, a season featuring 63 ATP tournaments across 29 countries, in addition to the four Grand Slams, as well as the introduction of the ATP Cup at the start of the year for the first time. The full 2020 ATP Tour calendar can be viewed here.

The 2020 season will kick off with the inaugural ATP Cup, a new team event that has been strategically integrated into the calendar to serve as a major launch to the ATP season. The ATP Cup will take place as a 10-day event in parallel across three Australian cities – Sydney, Brisbane, and one additional city to be announced in due course. The players’ team event, held in partnership with Tennis Australia, will feature 24 countries competing for US$15 million in prize money, the biggest prize purse of any ATP tournament on the calendar, and a maximum of 750 ATP Rankings points at stake.

Other changes in the calendar include:
– The ATP 250 event in Pune, India, moving from week 1 to week 5 in the ATP calendar, alongside Montpellier and Cordoba.
– The ATP 250 event in Sofia, Bulgaria, moving from week 5 to week 39 in the ATP calendar, alongside Chengdu and Zhuhai.
– The 2020 season also sees the return of Adelaide in week 2 of the ATP calendar for the first time since 2008.
– ATP has an open application in process for an ATP 250 grass court event in Europe to take place the week before Wimbledon, currently held in Antalya.

The season will culminate with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Nitto ATP Finals, first held in Tokyo in 1970, as The O2 in London hosts the season finale for a twelfth consecutive year.

“The 2020 ATP Tour calendar will provide a global stage for the world’s greatest players to battle over 11 months for prestigious ATP titles, coveted ATP rankings points, and the ultimate prize of finishing the season as year-end ATP Tour No.1,” said Chris Kermode, ATP Executive Chairman & President. “2020 will also see the launch of the ATP Cup, an event that has all the ingredients to become something very special at start of the season, and we look forward to seeing it come to fruition through our partnership with Tennis Australia.”

In addition, all ATP tournaments on the 2020 calendar will feature the Shot Clock, one of many innovations stemming from the award-winning Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan, a tournament that will continue to serve as a platform to trial innovations and promote the future stars of the sport.

The ATP Tour has attracted record audiences on site, on television and online in recent years with more than 4.5 million fans attending tournaments, and almost 1 billion viewers tuning in throughout the season.

How much better is Rafael Nadal, who seeks his fourth title at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells this week, on clay courts over hard courts?

With the hard-court Miami Open presented by Itau and the clay-court Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters looming large in the next month, it’s a topic that naturally gets a lot of attention at this time of year.

The Spaniard has never won in Miami, but he has taken the title in Monte-Carlo a record 11 times, including the last three in a row. The results are night and day.

On the surface, Nadal is historically about 20 per cent better on clay, winning 92 per cent (415-36) of his clay-court matches and 77 per cent (442-130) of his hard-court matches throughout his career, which represents a 19.5 per cent increase.

But when you break matches down to points – the building blocks of our sport – you can make a solid case that the Spaniard is just 2.7 per cent better.

An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of Nadal’s winning percentage when returning serve on clay and hard uncovers that he does perform better on clay, but only marginally better than hard.

The data set comes from ATP Masters 1000s from 2011 to 2018 and the Nitto ATP Finals. The win percentages are calculated from returns put back in play, therefore aces and return errors are not included.

FIRST SERVE RETURNS

It’s jaw-dropping to uncover that Nadal is able to forge a winning percentage (50.6 per cent) on clay when he is able to get the first serve back in play. What’s interesting is that he is not that far away on hard court either, with a gap of just 2.1 percentage points, or 4.3 per cent.

SECOND SERVE RETURNS

The gap in win percentage is actually closer between hard and clay against second serves, with Nadal winning 2.5 per cent more on clay (2.1 percentage points).

With first serves and second serves combined, Nadal has won 53.7 per cent of return points on clay and 52.3 per cent on hard, representing a 1.4 percentage point gap, or a 2.7 per cent increase on clay.

Nadal is the ATP career leader on clay with both first serve and second serve return points won. On hard, he is ranked 23rd best against first serves, and 14th best against second serves.

We play a sport of incredibly small margins. A point here or there in Miami for Nadal over the years could have definitely led to more silverware to sit beside his impressive Monte-Carlo haul.