Indian Wells 2018

Entrance to the venue

We've been drifting away from tennis over the past couple of years. It used to be that we played every week, at least, but a few weeks ago a friend asked if I'd like to go bang a ball around and I realized I hadn't been on a court in months. Once we watched virtually all televised tournaments, but recently our attention span has so dwindled that now we only fitfully follow the four majors. We've been going to the tournament in Indian Wells every year for over a decade but last year skipped it and went to Hawaii instead. So this year we considered the question of whether to go with some ambivalence. Should we face the fact that we just don't have the enthusiasm we once had for the game? Indeed, was that a fact? In the end we decided to take another crack at it and see if we could recapture some of the thrills we once felt.

We took a slightly different approach this year, flying down to Ontario Wednesday evening and staying in a hotel near the airport that night, then driving the 80 miles down I-10 to Indian Wells Thursday morning. We got to the venue around 10:30AM, about a half hour after it opened, and still managed to find decent seats in our favorite area of Stadium 2, the section that gets afternoon shade. Initially we were in the sun, but there was a thin, high overcast of clouds drifting by on a cool, light breeze. It was pretty much ideal weather for tennis, whether playing or watching, even without the shade.

 

Denis Shapovalov

The first match up was a wild card we'd never heard of from the USA named Danielle Collins who defeated the qualifier Taylor Townsend. This was followed by the tedious spectacle of American Donald Young getting crushed by the talented Croatian Borna Coric, and then an unknown (to us) teenager from Russia called Sofya Zhuk, who we learned had won the Wimbledon Junior Girls title back in 2015, upset Frenchwoman Alizé Cornet. The finale featured the charismatic new talent from Canada, Denis Shapovalov. We'd heard of him and found his beautifully flowing, powerful ground-strokes as exciting to watch as we'd been led to believe. He easily beat Ricardes Berankis from Lithuania. It was dark by that time so we wandered around the grounds visiting the various pavilions, buying t-shirts, and listening to the Bryan Brother's Band before calling it a night. 

The Moet Pavilion

 

Friday morning we got to the venue before the gates opened and rushed to Stadium 2 to grab seats in the second row. We were rewarded for our diligence with an incredibly boring marathon match between the Czech Petra Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion, and Yulia Putintseva.  Kvitova's energy level was extremely low, she seemed so lethargic as to be barely functioning, yet Putintseva was able to take advantage only insofar as to drag the match out for a seemingly interminable three hours. By the time it was over I was regretting having come, and none of the following matches was good enough to redeem this initial misery. Probably the best part of the day was the two Asian guys from LA sitting with us. They were quite kind and friendly and we got to know them fairly well over the course of ten hours. It's curious meeting people with whom you have nothing in common other than the willingness to sit and watch tennis for ten hours straight. It was the warmest day of our stay, in the high 80s, without the cloud cover to shield us from the sun, and the heat was initially enervating, but the shade from the tier of seats above us finally worked its way down by 1PM or so.  However, the only really engaging match of the day was the last, an evening doubles match between Marc Lopez and Feliciano Lopez (not related) against the team of Grigor Dimitrov and Juan Martin Del Potro. Although the latter were much superior as singles players, the Lopez's easily defeated them with their far more extensive experience as a team. 

Del Potro and Dimitrov

 

On Saturday morning we got to the venue even earlier but were farther back in line because more people showed up, it being a weekend day. (The size of the crowds continues to grow every year.) Nevertheless, we managed to snag front row seats (in the General Admission section) in Stadium 2. The sky was opaquely overcast and every so often a few drops of rain would spit out of it, although never enough to stop play for more than a few minutes, but the temperature was so cool I had to put on a jacket. Second up was Shapovalov again, this time against Pablo Cuevas from Uruguay. We were looking forward to it but this time he disappointed. Cuevas, seeded 30^th, was clearly a better player than Berankis, (he was a quarter-finalist last year), but also Shapovalov seemed off, his shots spraying wide or long. He was struggling to find his game and never did. It was disappointing, as we longed to see him in full flight, as he had been in his first match. But the following contest, between a pair of young up-and-comers, Andrey Rublev of Russia and Taylor Fritz of the USA, made up for it. Rublev, who was seeded 27^th, tried mightily, but in the end Fritz just had too much game for him, despite his much lower ranking.  But it was a thriller, a tight, exciting contest; probably the best match we saw.  Although the last of the day, a doubles battle between the Bryan brothers and the Zerev brothers, was also a lot of fun. It was over at eight and we immediately set off for Ontario to spend the night before catching our early morning flight out. 

Michelob Ultra Pavilion

 

Unfortunately, as we headed west toward LA the rain gradually increased in intensity until we were in the middle of a real downpour. It was raining so hard the wipers in our Elantra going full blast couldn't clear it and the visibility went from poor to bad. Frieda was driving and she hunkered down, slowed to about fifty, locked onto the taillights of the car ahead, and kept it slow and steady in the center lane until the deluge began to ease off. Of the 80 miles we had to cover, the middle 35 or so got downright scary, but by the time we got to Ontario the rain had settled down to manageable proportions.

So will we go back next year? Not sure. It's a little crazy to watch that much tennis, but it takes you away from your daily routine. It's a few days of escape into a simpler alternative universe. There were some thrilling moments and some very boring stretches. And occasionally you meet some nice people who share the strange inclination to watch ten hours of tennis at a stretch. We got hotel reservations for next year, because you have to get those early these days. For the rest, we'll have to wait and see.