Even after 25 years, Indian Wells still lives up to its hype as a tennis paradise

When they start playing tennis for real in the desert on Wednesday, it will be an amazing 25 years ago in a place where the phrase “tennis paradise” became not just a marketing label but an event. to reality.

Now they call it the BNP Paribas Open, which means it’s well sponsored and well established on the circuit of the sport, both men and women. During the two-week event, all the biggest and most famous players will compete, surrounded by palm trees and nearby mountains, and more than 450,000 people will walk through the doors, come to watch and hopefully be conquered by one of the players . The greatest sports performance.

One of those years, if the right players play at the right time, they could draw half a million fans through the hallowed gates of the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. To put it into perspective, at least one of the sport’s major tournaments – the French Open – is struggling to attract more spectators than Indian Wells every year. When reporters called Paris to ask about the incident, the phone often ran out of battery. Ah, the thing about international phone service.

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For perspective, it should be noted that the nearest major metropolitan area, Los Angeles, is 100 miles away from Indian Wells. To watch tennis in Paris, all you need to do is find a taxi. To travel to Indian Wells for a tennis match, you may want to find a tour operator.

It all started in the 1974 finals in Tucson, Arizona, where John Newcombe defeated Arthur Ashe. Even though the finalists were some of the best players in the world, the tournament wasn’t even an official tour event at the time. This certainly hasn’t changed over the years. Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic have both won five titles at this tournament, while Rafael Nadal has won three singles titles and two doubles titles. The women’s tour began in 1989, and since then the singles competition has featured players such as Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Mary Jo Fernandez, Lindsay Davenport, Seth Raina Williams, Kim Clijsters and Victoria Azarenka won twice.

This game always comes with big names and lofty expectations. But from the start, the highest expectations came from former world-class players Charlie Passarer and Raymond Moore. Eventually, they were joined by world-class thinker and doer Steve Simon.

Pasarel and Moore, who had a home in the desert, took control of the event and brought it to Mission Hills in Rancho Mirage in 1976, where it ran smoothly until the Great Desert Flood of 1980 . That year’s competition, still men’s only, rained heavily after the quarterfinals and there were reports that Noah was preparing his ark. It was this, along with some business connections, that led Passarer and Moore to bring it to La Quinta in 1981, where the bleachers seated 7,500 and still attracted Jimmy Connors and Yannick No. A et al.

This is a good event. Despite the cozy environment, great players still came. But Pasarel and Moore don’t think it’s that good. So they gathered some tennis-minded investors and built a venue they called the Hyatt Grand Championship, complete with a hotel and more seats. The stadium, mostly temporary bleachers, rises along Highway 111, the main thoroughfare through Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. Talk about prime real estate.

Boris Becker won the championship at the age of 19. Pete Sampras defeated Andre Agassi in a match in the ’95 finals. By 1996, the women’s tour also joined the event. The desert event has wowed the tennis world around the world. There were only two opponents—Pasarel and Moore.

“The Hyatt property is not big enough,” Pasarel said. “We don’t have enough space.”

So while most others rolled their eyes at this, the desert dreamers started looking for more funding and more community commitment, and one day there it was, rising out of the dunes and desert dunes like the Egyptian pyramids. rise. It can accommodate 16,100 people. This makes it the second-largest tennis stadium in the United States, behind the 23,771-seat US Open’s giant stadium in New York, and the third-largest in the world, with 1,400 fewer seats than London’s O2 Arena. At the U.S. Open, with 20-20 vision and a telescope, you can see the action on the course. If not, just eat a hot dog and watch the big screen.

Since its inception in Tucson in 1974, the Desert Championship has been known as the American Airlines Tennis Tournament, Congo Classic, Grand Marnier, Aviator Pen Classic, Newsweek Champions Cup and Pacific Life Open. In 2000-01 it was called the Indian Wells Tennis Masters Series. That might as well have been called the Pasarell-Moore Tennis Tournament because there was no sponsorship and they were all scrambling. Buyers from Shanghai have been lingering, and even huge investments from Tennis Magazine, Chris Evert, Billie Jean King and Sampras can’t stop the banks forever.

With BNP Paribas, life got better and money was no longer an issue. That’s not to say there aren’t other issues.

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In 2001, while Pasarell and Moore were still counting their money, Serena and Venus Williams were playing each other in the semifinals. Five minutes before the start of the match, Venus announced that she would miss Serena’s match due to injury. In the finals, some fans booed Serena when she faced off against Kim Clijsters, which continued uncomfortably for much of the match. Serena won, and a USA Today report a week later quoted the sisters’ father, Richard, as saying that in addition to the boos, there were racist comments. Others suggested the crowd’s anger stemmed from the Williams sisters rendering expensive semi-final tickets useless.

Serena and Venus refused to compete in the event for years, with Serena returning in 2014 and Venus in 2016. During that time, one of the people most responsible for bringing the Williams sisters back was race director Simon. He was never able to complete the event, but they did return, reportedly at the urging of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, who bought the game in 2009 tournament.

Interestingly, when the Women’s Tour was looking for a new commissioner in 2015, it hired Simon. A year later, he was forced to react to a statement from Moore, who said the women’s tour owed a huge debt to men and players such as Federer and Nadal who had developed the sport to a point where it benefited women.

“They should get down on their knees and thank them,” Moore said disapprovingly. Simon, who wasn’t in Indian Wells at the time but has attended the same press conferences as Moore and Passarelle for years, had to respond with full knowledge of the context of the championship’s struggles with the women’s tour over the years. Simon may not have objected at all, but Moore said it so harshly. Moore resigned from his administrative role at the championship and never really left his desk, instead accepting a new title. After all, it was Moore who did most of the contact and pitching to Ellison that ultimately led to the billionaire’s acquisition.

An interesting anecdote, perhaps you could call it ironic. Or maybe all is forgiven. One of the wild cards issued by this year’s event is Venus Williams, who will turn 44 in June and is ranked 474th.

Through it all, year after year, Indian Wells became the temple of tennis.

Soon, fans will gather at this venue again for the 25th time. The palm trees will sway gently and the mountains in the distance will sparkle. Nadal will practice his golf handicap at Ellison’s Sensei Porcupine Creek course. Navratilova, Fernandez, Davenport and possibly Evert will handle the bulk of the broadcast duties. Moore will stay out of the spotlight, Pasarell will greet old friends in the boxes and around the venue, showing his generosity, and Simon will slip in for a few days to see people he’s known for years and appreciate the event’s attention to detail. Thinking reaches new levels every year and then quietly disappears again.

Fans would buy cheap ground passes early in the week and haul them from one outfield to the next. These will be the real hardcore tennis fans. Some spend a lot of time watching players warm up on the practice court, where the seats offer a closer view than at most tennis events. Others ended the day with dinner reservations at the posh Nobu restaurant, which overlooks the Stadium 2 pitch.

Many will wait for the sun to set and sit in comfortable chairs next to the big screen outside the home stadium. You won’t miss any action sitting there. Night tennis in the desert, with the occasional weather curveball, has its appeal.

Some even take a nap in Tennis Paradise, the only place that truly lives up to its name.

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.