Roger Federer and Andy Murray will meet in the Cincinnati Masters semi-finals today.

The world's top two players progressed from their respective quarter-finals on Friday.

Defending champion Murray was given a major scare by French lucky loser Julien Benneteau in the first match before Federer swept aside former world number one Lleyton Hewitt.

New father Federer, a 6-3 6-4 winner against the Australian, was delighted to advance with the minimum fuss.

"My expectations were 'so so', let's say," he told Sky Sports Xtra. "Because of the twin girls, the focus was elsewhere for a few weeks.

"I practised hard, obviously... I wouldn't have come over to the North American tour without expectations.

"It's good, the number of matches I've had now. I'm feeling okay so far and hopefully I can keep going and playing well."

Top seed Federer needed just 69 minutes to see off Hewitt, who was clearly struggling throughout with a right knee injury.

"I didn't pay attention to his knee," said the Swiss. "I just thought he had not a very good day at the office.

"He made quite a few unusual mistakes for him. Maybe he was trying to go for more than he had to because of the knee, he was sort of obliged to.

"From my side, I think I played a solid match. I don't think it was the best match we've played against each other. It would be a bit strange if we played 22 times and this was our best match.

"I'm happy I was able to came through because Lleyton is always a tough customer."

Murray had been an overwhelming favourite heading into his quarter-final tie, but found himself staring at a shock exit when he conceded his first set of the week 6-4 and then went 2-0 down in the second.

However, the third seed responded brilliantly with three breaks of serve to level the match and then stormed through the third set to prevail 4-6 6-3 6-1.

Murray admitted afterwards that a mammoth 53-shot rally in game three of the second set, which ended with Benneteau missing a smash, had been the turning point.

"That unbelievable rally, 53 shots or something, that really changed the match for me," he said. "Physically he was struggling a little bit after that."

Murray added: "I served terrible in the first set - six doubles. The ball was blowing all over the place.

"He obviously played well. It was tricky conditions. I was shanking a lot of balls at the start.

"I was hitting the ball really clean from the back of the court but leaving a lot of balls short so I ended up doing a lot of running, which wasn't really the plan going into the match."

The second semi-final pits second seed Rafael Nadal against fourth-ranked Novak Djokovic in another strong contest.

Nadal was relatively untroubled in seeing off Czech Tomas Berdych 6-4 7-5 in one hour 41 minutes, with a pair of service breaks enough to seal the win.

Djokovic, meanwhile, ousted ninth seed Gilles Simon by the same score.

The Serb converted three of nine break points on the way to victory inside 90 minutes.