Third round play at the season's first Tennis Mastes Series event, the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, gets underway with play from the men's bottom half of the draw. After two rounds of relatively few surprises aside from the Tommy Haas upset of Andy Roddick, the top seeds in action today World No. 2 and defending Indian Wells champion Rafael Nadal, No. 3 Novak Djokovic, No. 5 David Ferrer, No. 8 Richard Gasquet and No. 9 James Blake will look to continue the campaigns.
There are two third round matches on Monday involving players from the same country. No. 14 seed Paul-Henri Mathieu takes on No. 17 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in a match between the No. 2 and 3 ranked French players on the ATP circuit. In another match between the No. 2 and 3 Argentine players, No. 16 Guillermo Canas meets No. 21 Juan Monaco.
No. 9 James Blake looks to even his career record against No. 19 Carlos Moya as the two square off for the 12th time. The 31-year-old Spaniard, the oldest player remaining in the tournament, is 6-5 lifetime against Blake and this will be the sixth year in the last seven (except '04) they will have met. They both have won 16 sets along with three tie-breaks each in the rivalry. Blake has a 4-3 edge on hard courts, winning the last three, but Moya won the last meeting on clay in May 2007 at ATP Masters Series Hamburg in three sets. In eight of the 10 bestof- three matches, it has been decided in a third set. Blake won the previous meeting 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 at the Pacific Life Open in the Round of 16 in 2003. Both players also are former Indian Wells finalists – Blake in 2006 (l. to Federer) and Moya in 1999 (l. to Philippoussis).
American wild card Donald Young is the youngest player remaining in the tournament at 18 years, 7 months. Young, who takes on No. 2 and defending champion Rafael Nadal on Monday, posted the biggest win of his career Saturday over No. 32-ranked Feliciano Lopez in three sets. On playing Nadal, Young said, "I'm happy to be in the round of 32. I see him (Nadal) play a lot. He's obviously another lefty. He's two in the world for so long, so I'm just going to go out there and have fun and play the best I can and see what happens." When asked about playing a fellow left-hander for the second straight match, Young added, "It's different, you know. Well, growing up I played with lefties all the time, but lately I have not been playing with lefties very much. It's different. Different spin. They hit it the way you hit it. It's like playing myself, and I wouldn't want to play myself." (ATP Digital Services)
Tuesday, Roger Federer returns against Nicolas Mahut. Andy Murray meets Ivo Karlovic. Lleyton Hewitt faces Mikhail Youzhny and Radek Stepanek challenges David Nalbandian.
In the U.S., Fox Sports Net will air coverage this afternoon, check your local listings. Live streaming from four courts is available online by clicking the banner below:
