Indian Wells recap: Novak Djokovic, Jack Draper and one of the points of the year

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The fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells is in the books, and it’s time for the quarterfinals in California’s Coachella Valley.

Here are the matches and players that have stood out, some things tennis fans may have missed, and what to look out for as the tournament heads into its final stages.

How a match with the taste of rust delivered one of the points of the year

Defending champion Jack Draper came through a tight, tense fourth-round match against Novak Djokovic 4-6, 6-4, 7-6(5), but the scoreline hardly tells the story of one of the most compelling matches of the tournament.

What turned it, according to Djokovic in his news conference? One point. This one, in the first game of the third set:

A 26-shot rally that Djokovic won, which typified the quality of the best points of the match, but also why Djokovic ultimately lost it. The point left the 38-year-old exhausted, and while he won the game, he was broken in the next. Draper then led the set until 5-4, when the pressure of serving for the match got to him.

Three unforced errors and one great point by Djokovic took the score to 5-5. With Draper serving to stay in the match one game later, Djokovic passed up a gaping forehand opportunity down the line in favor of an unnecessary lob that floated way long; leading 4-3 on serve in the tiebreak, he played an apparently random backhand drop shot that gasped into the net. His decision-making was uncharacteristically imprecise for parts of the match, with both players spending most of the first set still shaking off rust — Draper on his return from a left-arm injury, and Djokovic in his first tournament since the Australian Open.

After raising the quality and intensity through the second and third sets, with the crescendo of that impossible point, both of them appeared exhausted by the end. A fresh, in-form Daniil Medvedev will be looking forward to a quarterfinal in the heat of the Indian Wells late afternoon Thursday.

— James Hansen

What makes a player love desert tennis — and troubling Carlos Alcaraz?

Only three men have made four BNP Paribas Open quarterfinals in the 2020s. Medvedev, who eased past Alex Michelsen Wednesday to reach his fourth, is one of them. The other two are Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1, and Cameron Norrie, the 2021 champion, who Alcaraz faces in the last eight Thursday.

Norrie, the No. 27 seed, loves desert tennis. His high-bouncing forehand and scudding, low backhand discombobulate players on courts and in conditions which can reward both, and he has also developed a habit of upsetting Alcaraz.

Norrie has won three of the pair’s past five meetings, including the most recent one at the Paris Masters in October. It’s a strange sequence for a player who is not generally thought of as a giantkiller, instead grinding opponents down with his steady baseline game and phenomenal fitness levels.

Norrie turned the tables on Alcaraz to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in Paris, outdoing Alcaraz in stealing points — something the world No. 1 does better than anybody in the world. Norrie won 37 percent of the points he played on defense, to 27 percent for Alcaraz, according to data from Tennis Data Innovations.

Other factors have been more rudimentary. Alcaraz’s backhand was ineffective at the Paris Masters. He made just 73 percent of them, compared to an average of 84 percent, while Norrie made 85 percent of his. During Norrie’s win at the 2022 Cincinnati Open, Alcaraz’s return fell off a cliff.

Speaking in a news conference Wednesday after cruising past Casper Ruud 6-1, 7-6(2), Alcaraz joked that he didn’t want to say why he found Norrie so difficult, because he knew his opponent would be watching.

“I would say lefties are always tricky to play against,” he said.

“Just the way he can change the the height of the ball. He has a really flat backhand and really topspin forehand. So you can be a little bit confused sometimes with how it’s gonna come, the ball, to you.

“He’s a gladiator. He’s a real fighter, fighting every ball, every game, every set. So it’s really difficult when you’re facing someone who never gives up any point or any ball.”

Norrie meanwhile said in an interview after beating Rinky Hijikata 6-4, 6-2 that he feels like he can make Alcaraz “play every single point and frustrate him in his tennis sometimes.”

Norrie acknowledged he’ll still be the underdog, pointing to Alcaraz winning their two Grand Slam meetings. As for his love of playing in Indian Wells, a venue where the wind and fluctuating temperatures can drive many to distraction, he said that “growing up in New Zealand was crazy windy.”

“These kind of windy conditions don’t really faze me too much, or those tough conditions. I think my game is pretty tricky (even) without windy conditions so I kind of use that to my advantage sometimes.”

Alcaraz will be the big favorite, but Norrie’s qualities add intrigue to a match that would otherwise seem like a formality.

— Charlie Eccleshare

Another step forward for Iga Świątek?

Iga Świątek lavished praise on Karolína Muchová this week, likening her game to Roger Federer’s ahead of their fourth-round matchup Wednesday and admitting after that Muchová is her favorite player to watch.

“Basically, she might be the only player I watch,” Świątek said in an on-court interview.

Muchova might prefer Świątek turn her attention elsewhere. The world No. 2 harnessed her familiarity with Muchová’s game and turned in her best match of the year Wednesday, a surgical 6-2, 6-0 victory that sets up a quarterfinal against Elina Svitolina.

Her dominance was a reminder of what Świątek, a two-time BNP Paribas Open champion, can do when she feels at home. She is clearly confident facing Muchová’s style of play— she’s won all four of their meetings since 2023 — and comfortable on Indian Wells’ slower hard courts, even though players say they are quicker this year. Świątek was able to take her time Wednesday, ripping high-kicking forehands into the corners that pulled Muchová from side to side and pinned her to the baseline.

Unable to get to net where she does most of her damage, Muchová, who captured her first WTA 1000 title at the Qatar Open last month, looked flat and totally unable to hurt Świątek, who emerged from a scratchy opening four games to break with two beautifully played points and never looked back.

“I just chose the right balls to go forward or to stay back and grind a bit more and play with more shape,” Świątek said in her news conference.

“I think just the decision-making was good today so I didn’t rush, and I had just comfortable situations to do what I wanted to.”

Świątek won her previous two titles in the Coachella Valley in 2022 and 2024. If the pattern holds, 2026 could be her year to become the first woman to win the tournament three times.

— Ava Wallace

How to measure a player’s rise?

For the past 10 months, Victoria Mboko’s tennis career has moved at exactly one speed: fast.

The 19-year-old Canadian had already composed a series of absurd win-streaks on the third-tier World Tennis Tour when she produced a bullish first-round win against former Wimbledon quarterfinalist Lulu Sun at last year’s French Open, before beating Germany’s Eva Lys in the second round and losing to Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the third.

It took her all of three months after that to win the Canadian Open, a WTA 1000 tournament one rung below a Grand Slam, which was just her sixth event on tour. She sprinted to another milestone at this year’s Australian Open by reaching the second week of a Grand Slam for the first time, losing a fourth-round match to Aryna Sabalenka.

She didn’t waste any time setting up a rematch. Mboko will face the world No. 1 again at Indian Wells Thursday, in the quarterfinals.

If Mboko’s blistering ascent doesn’t impress in a vacuum, consider her rise through the rankings compared to the only teenager ranked in the top 10, Mirra Andreeva. Mboko took 13 months from the start of 2025, when she was ranked No. 333, to make her top 10 debut in February. It took Andreeva — gasp — 25 months from the time she was ranked No. 293 at the start of 2023 to break into the top 10 in February last year.

For Coco Gauff, yet another star who broke onto the scene as a young teen, the journey from No. 313 in July of 2019 to the top 10 took 38 months.

Life changing that much that fast could waylay any young person. Mboko’s approach to dealing with the breakneck pace of her career once involved some level of delusion — as in, tricking her own mind to avoid putting herself under pressure. She pretended she was playing a different tournament, not a Grand Slam, during her French Open run.

After her dominant 6-4, 6-1 win against two-time major finalist Amanda Anisimova in Indian Wells’ fourth round Tuesday, Mboko said more recently she’s trained her focus on her effort, not outcomes.

“I just try to come to terms that with every tournament I play, it’s not going to be maybe the way I want it to [be],” Mboko said. “But I just want to give 100 percent effort, and there is always a lesson to learn.”

She learned plenty from facing Sabalenka for the first time in January, namely, that watching the world No. 1 from afar bears little resemblance to actually standing in the flight path of one of her groundstrokes. Even in that 6-1, 7-6(1) loss, she was a quick study.

This time, she hopes to keep Sabalenka from pushing her off court as often, having said in Melbourne that she felt like she did not hit a “thorough” ball often enough to trouble her opponent.

“We’ll see. I mean, it was my first time playing on a Grand Slam center court too, so I feel like there was a lot going on in my head, but yeah, we’ll see,” Mboko said.

“It’s a new day, new tournament.”

— Ava Wallace

Two confidence-building runs for Australian qualifiers?

Australian tennis found some cheer that has been hard to come by of late on both sides of the Indian Wells draw. Alex de Minaur is a fixture of the late stages of Grand Slams these days, but him aside, a country that once ruled over the tennis world has found precious little sustained success.

The fourth-round and quarterfinal appearances by Rinky Hijikata and Talia Gibson may not be anything like spurs to superstardom, but for the 25-year-old and 21-year-old, that is partly the point.

Hijikata took out No. 10 seed Alexander Bublik with a patient, calculated performance in the face of the mercurial Kazakh’s array of haymaker groundstrokes, deft drop shots, elite racket smashes, and whatever the hell this was:

Hijikata did not face a break point and also hit more winners (33) than unforced errors (27), absorbing Bublik’s aggressiveness. The 6-7(3), 7-6(3), 6-3 win was Hijikata’s first over a top-10 player, and took him to a first ATP Masters 1000 fourth round. He lost there to Cameron Norrie, but said after beating Bublik that “he’s had a hell of a year, never easy to face so I’m just pumped to get through.

“It could be the first time in my life I didn’t face a break point.”

Gibson went a step better with a stunning win over Jasmine Paolini, the No. 7 seed, to reach the quarterfinals. After winning the first set, the Australian rebounded from a Paolini comeback in the second by breaking the Italian three times in the third, ultimately triumphing 7-5, 2-6, 6-1. It was Gibson’s first top-10 win, and her third consecutive win over a top-20 player, after beating Clara Tauson and Ekaterina Alexandrova in the previous two rounds.

After beating Paolini, Gibson said she was “speechless” and needed time to process the win in her news conference, but added that her game style made her believe that such results were always possible. She said that one player in particular had helped her develop her tennis.

“I have been able to learn quite a bit from (Aryna) Sabalenka,” she said.

“I think she has one of the most aggressive games, and a very powerful game. I think over the last couple of years, being able to see her implement a little bit more of that variety in her game, as well, to complement her already extremely aggressive baseline game.”

Gibson faces Linda Nosková of the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals, who dispatched Alex Eala 6-2, 6-0 in the fourth round.

— James Hansen

Other notable results in the fourth round

Jessica Pegula (5) decided that nobody beats her five times in a row. She got past Belinda Bencic (12) 6-3, 7-6(5) in a high-quality match between two of the best absorbers of pace on the WTA Tour.

And the remaining ties in the women’s draw ended in injury retirements. Elina Svitolina (9) led Kateřina Siniaková 6-1, 1-1 when the Czech retired with a right hip injury, while Sonay Kartal retired with a back issue against Elena Rybakina (3) when down 6-4, 4-3.

 Up next: Quarterfinal picks

🎾 Aryna Sabalenka (1) vs. Victoria Mboko (16)

2 p.m. ET on Tennis Channel

Can Mboko do what she said she wants to do above and push Sabalenka even further than she did at the Australian Open? Sabalenka has been looking inevitable at Indian Wells so far, and Mboko will need to keep her shots deep at all times on the high-bouncing, slower courts.

🎾 Arthur Fils (30) vs. Alexander Zverev (4)

2 p.m. ET on Tennis Channel

Fils and Zverev have played six times, with Fils winning twice. Zverev is attempting to play a more aggressive style in big moments than is his nature, and he will need to do that against Fils, who can be merciless when given the opportunity to take over points and matches.

🎾 Jessica Pegula (5) vs. Elena Rybakina (3)

Not before 8 p.m. ET on Tennis Channel

Pegula and Rybakina’s Australian Open semifinal was one of the most gripping matches of the year, even though it was a straight-sets win for Rybakina, who went on to win the title. Pegula’s ability to redirect may be limited by the slower courts that take some of the speed off her ball, but the 90-degree weather forecast may give her some of it back. Rybakina, who has not served to her usual standards in the tournament so far, will need to raise her game against the American.

Tell us what you noticed in the fourth round…

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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