Last year, about this time, Roddick was having the best three weeks he’s had since, oh, say, Wimbledon.  Despite the usual suspects of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray playing both Indian Wells and Miami, all of them were upset somewhat early.  Roddick manage to slip through the draw and reach the finals of Indian Wells, losing to Ljubicic who was having the tournament of his life (beating Djokovic and Nadal en route) and winning his first Masters 1000.  About 4 years earlier, Ljubicic had reached 3 Masters 1000 finals, but lost all 3 so this was a nice victory late in his career.

Roddick would then reach the finals of Miami.  He, too, beat Nadal en route.  At that point, Nadal had not won a tournament for almost a year, and this would be the last tournament this would happen.  At Monte Carlo, Nadal would find his winning ways and decimate the field and then have the best year of his life winning 3 of 4 Slams.  Roddick, meanwhile, met Berdych in the finals.  Berdych had upset Federer along the way despite Federer holding match point.  Roddick would win this match.

Alas, the magic didn’t hold.  After Miami comes the grindingly long European clay season, not a Roddick favorite.  Roddick skipped Monte Carlo which is an optional Masters 1000.  He skipped Rome since a tour veteran can skip another Masters 1000 event.  He skipped Madrid, which he intended to play, but got sick.  He went to the French Open with little practice, and made a few rounds (reach the third), before losing, then was suffering from mono and lost to Yen-Hsun Lu at Wimbledon.

Perhaps Roddick was hoping for a repeat performance, but nope, didn’t happen.  Apparently some injury was bothering him, and he lost to Pablo Cuevas 6-4, 7-6.

Speaking of Radek–Radek Stepanek, that is.  Stepanek had not played a significant chunk of 2010 due to injury and came back later in the year.  He’s still trying to gain the form that put him in the top 30 in the world.  Alas, when your rankings go down, you can have the bad luck of beating Federer.  Federer generally doesn’t have Djokovic-like matches where he wins love and 1.  He’s usually more of the one break a set guy.  Federer had a comfortable 6-3, 6-3 win.

Last year, Olivier Rochus beat Djokovic in the opening round and we were all asking what was wrong with Djokovic.  Rochus didn’t have to face Djokovic this year, but he faced Marcos Baghdatis this year.  Fortunately for him, the result was the same: a victory.

Marin Cilic continues to struggle to reach the lofty goals the media set for him (to be a better player than del Potro).  He loses early again, this time to Tipsarevic.

Seven seeds lost on Saturday: (26) Chela, (8) Roddick, (20) Montanes, (28) Gulbis, (22) Baghdatis, (10) Melzer, (18) Cilic.

Finally, Rafael Nadal beat Nishikori 6-4, 6-4.  Nishikori tried to attack Nadal with mixed results.  While he hit a few good winning shots, he also hit a lot of errors.  Nishikori was broken early in both sets, and struggled to hold serve the rest of the way, but never broke serve.

Sunday has a few interesting matches.  Mardy Fish plays Richard Gasquet.  Gasquet had a great Indian Wells and may be getting his game back in gear, hoping for another solid result.  In the toughest match of the day, Robin Soderling will play Juan Martin del Potro.  There’s probably not two guys on tour that hit as hard as these players.  When del Potro was on two years ago, he won their meetings.  Soderling still needed another year to play solid tennis.  This will be a great measure of how Delpo is playing.