The draw was made yesterday, the rest of the post will summarise it but for your own examination you can find it here: http://www.atpworldtour.com/posting/2012/404/mds.pdf
First things first, Federer and Nadal are in the same half and Djokovic and Murray are in the same half.
I'll start of with Djokovic's quarter. Novak will face a qualifier (not specified yet) for his first match and if he were to win he could face Phillipp Kohlschreiber or the big-serving Kevin Anderson who will not be any easy encounter. Against big servers you must be extra-efficient on your own service games because if you were to be broken, it could be difficult to break back. Having said this I don't expect Djokovic to have much of a problem with Anderson. After this he could face Richard Gasquet who has worked himself into some decent form lately. In the quarterfinal the big names he could face are Berdych, Almagro or Roddick.
Nadal's first match will be either Alejandro Falla or the tricky Florian Mayer. The only names that really stand out majorly in his quarter are Dolgopolov - whom he could meet in the 3rd round - Lopez, Cilic and Tsonga. Tsonga is always capable of a major upset, but all in all I'd say this is the easiest draw of the four.
The first thing that caught my eye when looking at Federer's draw is the potential 3rd round encounter between him and Raonic who is working himself back into form this year. Raonic is of course a big server and has some very explosive groundstrokes, and so you would expect him to keep Federer on his toes. After this he could Monfils or Melzer, neither of which I would expect to do Federer much harm if they were to meet. In the quarterfinal Federer could face either of the two finalists last weekend in Acapulco: Verdasco or Ferrer.
Murray's first match doesn't appear to be very challenging either; he will play one of Garcia-Lopez and Machado. After this he could play Troicki or Ryan Harrison who managed to get a set off Murray in Melbourne about 6 weeks ago. If a repeat of this match was set it would certainly be worth a watch, but looking at the form Murray worked himself into in Dubai (despite being slightly disappointing in the final) you would not expect an upset. In his next match he could play Wawrinka who has given Murray a few troubles in the past - this match would certainly be a test for the Brit. In the quarterfinal he could face Isner or Fish who both showed some good form in their Davis Cup ties against Switzerland.
Who do I expect to win this tournament? What are the 'popcorn matches'? You'll have to find out in my following posts!
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