As Indian Wells heads to the later rounds, most of the remaining matches are scheduled on Stadium 1, the main stadium.  The organizers wanted Americans, Sam Querrey and John Isner, to be the evening highlight.  Little did they know that there would be two tense three set women’s matches that would push the start of the men’s match to 10 PM local.

Jelena Jankovic, former world number 1, has been struggling to regain her form and seemed to be well on her way to exiting the tournament against Italian, Sara Errani, but mustered enough to win the second set in a tiebreak and force a third set, which she also won.  That match was followed by Kim Clijsters, defending US Open champion, playing Russian, Alisa Kleybanova.  Despite the mostly pro-Clijsters crowd, a big lead in the third, and a 4-0 lead in the final set tiebreak, Clijsters was unable to win and saw Kleybanova take 7 points in a row in the tiebreak and the match.

Finally, Sam Querrey and John Isner took the court.  Although the two have been best friends on tour, playing doubles when they can, and recently named to the Davis Cup team, they had, until recently, never played each other on tour.  Several weeks ago, in Memphis, they met for the first time, and Querrey won that match in 3 tough sets for his third title on tour (he won Las Vegas in 2008 and Los Angeles last year).

Of the two, Querrey possesses the better ground game and Isner has the better serve.  Overall, a better ground game generally wins, but neither return serve exceptionally well though both are trying to be more aggressive.

Both players have essentially improved in the same way.   They’ve both developed big forehands.  Right now, Querrey’s forehand is more versatile.  He’s able to pick up tough shots off the ground and hit both inside out and inside in shots, while Isner seems more adept at only the inside out shot.  Isner is more likely to approach the net, probably due to his experience playing doubles in college and with Querrey, and partly because his movement on court isn’t as good as most pros, including Querrey.  However, both Querrey and Isner have been working on being more aggressive on return of serve, and that paid off in the tiebreak and in the one game Isner broke.  By hitting out on returns, Isner was able to pressure Querrey to hit the big shots and not allow him time to set up the point.

With two big servers, the match would undoubtedly come down to a critical break, and that’s exactly what happened.  In the first, neither player lost serve, so it went to a first set tiebreak, which Isner won 7 points to 3.  In the second set, Querrey put in a double, and got broken early on, and that was basically all she wrote.  Isner held for the remainder of the second set as Querrey found it difficult to get a read on Isner’s serve.  Isner never faced break point in the entire match, and so, short of winning tiebreaks, it was Isner’s match to lose.

Final score: 7-6(3), 6-4 to Isner.

Since Indian Wells is close to Los Angeles, where Querrey is based, his fans, the Sam-urai, were in full force.  Although most of the crowd had already headed home (being a late Monday evening) the Sam-urai were yelling out Sam’s name.  Isner, alas, doesn’t have the equivalent of that or the J-Block (James Blake’s fan group).  But he got the victory, nonetheless.  A cheering section might have been embarrassing to the normally diffident Isner.

John Isner now takes on Rafael Nadal who had a very easy match against Mario Ancic.  Nadal said, in a post-match interview, that he was pretty happy with the way he was hitting.  Certainly, Ancic had no answers as he attempted to trade shots from the baseline with Nadal.  Ancic made too many errors and even when he didn’t, Nadal went for big shots and took control of the points.

Nadal has never played John Isner.  Presumably, Isner will apply the same strategy as Karlovic.  Serve big and try to hold serve, and return big to try to apply pressure on Nadal.  Is Isner ready to step up for a big upset, or will Nadal have too much for him?