Floaters in the field include (WC) Bernard Tomic, (WC) Tommy Haas, Marcos Baghdatis, David Nalbandian, Xavier “X-Man” Malisse, and James Blake.

The Western & Southern Open features 18 of the Top 20 women’s players, with seeds Caroline Wozniacki, Vera Zvonareva, Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova, Li Na, Petra Kvitova, Francesca Schiavone, Marion Bartoli, Andrea Petkovic, Samantha Stosur, Agnieszka Radwanska, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Jelena Jankovic, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Ana Ivanovic, and Peng Shuai.

Serena Williams bids for her first title in over a year in Stanford.

John Isner on playing Nicolas Mahut again: “It’s going to be pretty nuts. I couldn’t believe it. I joked with him earlier in the week, last week, and said, ‘Watch us play each other.’ And he said, ‘No, there’s no way. That’s not even funny.’”

Schiavone beat France’s own Marion Bartoli 6-3, 6-3, mixing up her game to confound the two-hander who committed 18 unforced errors to 11 winners.

“I am through. I’m in the semifinals, so that’s the thing,” Nadal told reporters. “I have to be playing better and better every day if I want to have chances to win the final and that’s what I’m going to try.”

“I started too slow, absolutely too slow,” Schiavone said. “The key was to hit three, four, five, six, seven balls, but I couldn’t arrive at three, four. That was the way to win — if I went to the net in one shot, there was no way to win. From 4-1 down I played two really good games then she went a little bit down.”

For just the third time in the Open Era (since 1968) none of the Top 3 seeds will be in the final eight of a Grand Slam.

Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka play singles then doubles today at Indian Wells.

Loaded non-seeded field with former No. 1s Ivanovic and Safina, and former No. 2 Kuznetsova unseeded; first-round match-ups of interest are (6) Bartoli vs. Hantuchova, (7) Peer vs. (WC) Ivanovic, (8) Wickmayer vs. Kuznetsova, and potential second-round match-ups after seeded byes (1) Jankovic vs. Rezai and Stosur vs. Azarenka or Oudin