Andy Roddick is cleanly through to semifinals at Indian Wells

The ball is popping off Andy Roddick’s racket. His serves are hitting the hard court at the Indian Wells Tennis Center with nice, solid thwacks, and now the 27-year-old American is into the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open after his 6-3, 7-5 win over Spaniard Tommy Robredo on Friday afternoon.

Besides his big serving, Roddick hurt Robredo with solid returning, with a competent backcourt game and with confidence. As Roddick said afterward, he would enjoy winning this tournament, the only major U.S. event the top American men’s player hasn’t won. But now it gets tougher.

After beating consecutively two players against whom he is a combined 21-0 against (Robredo and Jurgen Melzer), Roddick, seeded No. 7, gets sixth-seeded Robin Soderling of Sweden in Saturday’s second semifinal. Soderling upset fourth-seeded Andy Murray of England, 6-1, 7-6 (4), Friday.

In Saturday’s noon semifinal, defending champion and third-seeded Rafael Nadal will play 31-year-old Croatian Ivan Ljubicic.

It took Roddick only 35 minutes to win the first set against the predictable baseline-based game of Robredo. Roddick got the only service break he needed in the eighth game when Robredo committed three big unforced errors. He got the decisive service break in the 11th game of the second set, at love. Robredo tossed in two double faults and sent a harmless forehand long on break point.

“I feel pretty good,” Roddick said. “I feel like I’m playing pretty well on my own serve. I think I’ve been broken once, but I don’t know that I’ve had that many break points against me throughout the week.”

Roddick has faced three break points in the tournament and, as he said, “holding [serve] easily makes my returns better.”

Murray seemed absent from his match against Soderling except for a brief moment late in the second set when he hit a sizzling backhand winner off a Soderling overhead that helped him to a service break and into the tiebreaker.

But the momentum was short-lived. Soderling won the first point, which Murray served, when Murray hit a backhand long. The unforced error caused Murray to yelp in anger and with Soderling serving consistently at around 130 mph (and even hitting 140 on an ace for the third point), the end came quickly.

Murray called his performance “poor.” He didn’t make excuses, although it seemed he may have been hampered by the toe he hurt while running into the net in his previous match.

“I didn’t move well. It’s partly down to the way he plays,” Murray said, referring to Soderling. “He was hitting the ball big from both sides. It happens sometimes. Just, I didn’t move particularly well.”

Roddick said that what makes Soderling tough is his power.

“Against him,” Roddick said, “you’re probably going to be on your heels. He takes a lot of it out of your hands. He’s not fun to play when he gets a clean hit on the ball.”

The two times Soderling beat Roddick, though, were indoors where the ball travels faster and lands harder.

“I’ve never played him outdoors,” Roddick said. “It’s probably a better place to play him.”

diane.pucin@latimes.com

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