Last week at Indian Wells, Federer lost to a hard hitting Mardy Fish of America 6-3, 6-2 in the semifinals. Monfils plays a similar aggressive baseline game but trails Federer head to head 0-1, losing their only meeting two years ago at Doha 6-3, 7-6(7-5).

Federer, 7-3 in matchplay this year, is also the furthest since 2000 into the year without winning a title but conveyed he can rebound in Miami.

"Confidence is very important," Federer said. "You sometimes can enter a tournament being totally confident and totally tired and still win it just through confidence, because, you know, you sort of recuperate throughout the event. But this tournament, to me, I mean, it's important, you know, but it's not important to what's ahead. Because after this I'm moving away from hard courts and I'm going on clay. So it's a different total sport almost. This is where my focus will then change at the French Open. At the moment I'm just concentrating on doing well at this event."