Andy Roddick takes on compatriot John Isner in a blockbuster opening semi-final in Winston-Salem.
Roddick has made crisp progress to the last four seeing off a succession of clay-court specialists with ease on the fast hard courts. He eased past Juan Monaco in Thursday's quarter-finals, dropping just nine points on his serve.
Isner had a much tougher battle with Marcos Baghdatis, fighting back from a first set obliteration to see off the Cypriot 1-6, 6-3, 6-4. It's his fourth semi-final of a very productive summer which has seen him on the move back towards the world's top 20.
Roddick leads 3-1 on the head-to-head and won in straight sets when they met in Indian Wells in March but he still has painful memories of Isner's sole win of the series, a dramatic five setter in the third round of the US Open two years ago.
"You can have a game plan, but it’s a lot tougher to execute," Roddick said, looking ahead to the clash. "A lot of times it’s out of your hands and it’s completely different from the matches I’ve played so far. It’s just whoever can scrape a return back on a big point and hope that something good happens. The biggest thing is you’ve just got to try and take care of your own serve. I don’t often go into a match with the second-best serve, but that will be the case tomorrow."
