The question mark that hung over Roger Federer’s pale blue bandana-wrapped head was large when he arrived at the year’s opening Masters Series event. It grew to gigantic proportions as he took his leave from the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, a dispirited figure left not only humiliated by the world’s 98th-ranked player but increasingly concerned at the state of his own health.

Glandular fever, from which Federer suffered at the beginning of the year, is a debilitating and often recurrent problem that is rarely banished from the body in a few weeks. So it is unfair to expect the world No 1 to recapture his most imperious form in the first tournament since his problem was identified.

Of course he has stood relatively unchallenged as the No 1 ranked player for 216 weeks, since February 2004, has won 12 Grand Slam titles, including five straight Wimbledons, and in five previous meetings had dropped just one set against last night’s opponent, Mardy Fish.

Finally, after defeats to Novak Djokovic in the semi-final of January’s Australian Open and Britain’s Andy Murray at Dubai less than three weeks ago, he is also going through a crisis as worrying as anything he has suffered in his career. Not since he reached No 1 has he gone three tournaments without reaching a final. Not since 2000 has he had he failed to lift any silverware in the opening three months of the competitive calendar. Yet on the evidence of his frankly sorry 6-3 6-2 demise against Fish, himself for so long the victim of the most atrocious ill-fortune with health and injuries, it seems at the moment that a lack of confidence seems to be most chronic ailment afflicting him.

Perhaps things were too easy for him en route to his semi-final meeting with 26-year-old Fish. He was ushered through his first couple of rounds by performances from Spain’s Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and France’s Nicolas Mahut that suggested they were intimidated before walking on to court. Ivan Ljubi-cic, as a result again of illness, is not the opponent he was a year ago and then Tommy Haas withdrew from the quarter-final after being stricken by a virus after beating Murray.

So Federer walked out to face Fish seemingly suitably rested after a three-day break. Instead he seemed to start cold in the 85-degree conditions and never truly warmed to the task while Fish, buoyed by a gutsy win over David Nalbandian a day earlier, just carried on where he left off.

Elegance is not the way for the Florida-based Minnesotan, whose career has been abbreviated by two bouts of wrist surgery and also held back by shoulder, foot and knee injuries. Fish serves big and likes to follow up with a forceful forehand or attack the net to volley, but against a chronically sub-standard Federer, he was allowed to stoke his self-belief to such an extent that practically every shot he tried ended up looking supreme.

Federer often could only glare across the court, not in anger at his opponent but simply in derision at the direction he had sent the ball. Twice as many unforced errors flew from his racket as winners and by the end he was so disoriented he was invoking HawkEye to challenge line calls that were clearly three inches wide of the sideline.

Fish now meets Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic. The 20-year-old Serb must surely sense that the coming months can see him narrow the gap on Federer and the man he beat last night, Rafael Nadal.

Djokovic did not just exact revenge for last year’s defeat to the Spaniard in last year’s Indian Wells final. He gave another emphatic demonstration that whenever the conversation turns towards the very pinnacle of men’s tennis, the subject is now very much a threesome rather than the long-standing duo.

So many times in the past Nadal has bludgeoned his way to victory because his power and presence simply intimidates opponents and there have been times when Djokovic has fallen prey. But a performance brimful of quality and overflowing with self-belief allowed him to cruise through to today’s final and leave the vanquished defending champion wondering where to turn. Never in the pair’s eight previous meetings had Djokovic demonstrated such superiority as he did in this 6-3 6-2 destruction that lasted three minutes less than an hour and a half. Rarely did Nadal get into anything like the dominant form in which he revels and even the extended baseline rallies that are his stock in trade became a Serbian domain.

With confidence rapidly ebbing, Nadal was unable to assert his usual counter-punching style and two successive breaks of serve effectively assured Djokovic of his fourth Masters Series final in 12 months that have seen him rise from being a player of perceived tremendous potential to a contender for every prestigious tournament that is played.

Whether the same can be said for his fellow Australian Open champion Maria Sharapova, the next few weeks may tell. After losing out to fellow Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova in her bid to reach today’s women’s final, Sharapova announced she has suffered a reoccurrence of the shoulder injury that plagued her for much of last year and withdrew from next week’s Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.

While Kuznetsova prepares herself to take on top seeded Ana Ivanovic – a comprehensive 7-6, 6-3 winner over her fellow Serb Jelena Jankovic – Sharapova once again stressed that her jet-setting much-in-demand lifestyle comes with a price. She was outplayed for much of the two hours 20 minutes that it took Kuznetsova to win 6-3 5-7 6-2. Sharapova’s form was erratic – she committed 20 unforced errors in the first set alone – and ultimately her normally dependable serve gave way to allow the second seed through.

Women’s final, British Eurosport, today, 7.15pm