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| Entrance |
That's right, we returned to Indian
Wells this year, yet again. Frieda had a fantasy about getting
reserved seats one day in a shady section of Stadium 2, though they
were more than three times the price of General Admission tickets, so
we could come and go as we pleased and the seats would always be
there, empty and waiting for us. We got them for the first Saturday
(the tournament runs two weeks), which we figured would be the most
crowded day, because it's Saturday and the day the male seeds join
the fray.
We flew into Ontario Thursday midday,
picked up a Toyota Corolla at the airport and headed east on I-10
through unexpectedly heavy traffic. We had anticipated getting to
the tennis venue 2:30-3:00 PM but didn't roll in until nearly 4:00.
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| Stadium 7 |
Pulling into Indian Wells Tennis Garden
we were engulfed in a swirling cloud of dust borne aloft by a frigid
wind—not an auspicious beginning, and hardly living up to the
epithet “Tennis Paradise” we found newly scrawled above the
entrance. The lot was full and we had to park half a mile from the
gate and walk back into the sun's glare filtered through the frigid,
dust-filled wind. The dust subsided inside the venue,
but the icy wind, which seemed to be blowing directly down from the
snow caps on the mountains, remained. Perhaps because of this,
decent seats were easy to find, but the diving temperatures soon
drove us out, forcing the long hike back to the car. In short,
Thursday was a bust.
Friday we hustled to the venue by 9:30
AM (the gates open at ten and match play starts at eleven) and nailed
down good seats in Stadium 2 for Tomas Berdych vs. Feliciano Lopez,
which Lopez surprised us by winning in two tiebreaks. Next up was
Stan Wawrinka, three-time grand slam champion, against Daniel Evans,
which went three sets, and then a second round woman's match
featuring the #2 woman in the world, Simona Halep, who won easily.
But by the second set of her match, late in the afternoon, the cold wind was starting to kick
up again, so we bailed and motored over to Don Diego's on Highway 111
for dinner.
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| From Pizzavino |
On Saturday morning we slept in because
we knew our reserved seats were waiting for us. Even after we got to
the venue we used up some time shopping for tee-shirts and didn't
cruise into the stadium until the first match, Angelique Kerber from
Germany (a former #1 currently ranked #8) vs. Yulia Putintseva,
was underway. It was perhaps ironic that, after the extra expense we
had incurred trying to insure ourselves some shade, we now were too
cold and longed for the sun that was bathing the cheap seats in
warmth. But we had foreseen this potential issue and brought
sweatshirts along in a backpack. Once donned, they proved adequate
for us to watch in comfort as Kerber (who eventually made it to the final)
annihilated Putintseva (who won only 2 games). Next
up was Madison Keyes, but Frieda doesn't like her and wanted to go to
Stadium 7 to see the all-Croatian contest between Borna Coric and the
40-year-old, seven-foot-tall giant, Ivo Karlovic, with his massive
serve. We found seats in the second row at the end toward the
corner, so every time Ivo served into the ad court from the far side
I feared the ball was going to take my head off as it slammed into
the low fence right in front of me with savage force . Not long into
the match we had to doff the sweatshirts because we got too hot
sitting in full sun. It was fun to be out on a small court, up close
to the action like the old days when the tournament was smaller.
Also the outside environment was closer. You could see the bare
rugged mountains in the near distance. Yet the crowds we had to push
through to get there had exploded to three or four times the density
they used to be in those old days.
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| Near Village Square at Night |
When that match was over (Karlovic won
in straight but not lopsided sets), we headed back to Stadium 2 for a
match between the steady grinder Phillip Kohlschrieber and the
talented but moody Nick Kyrgios. Kyrgios had won the tournament in
Acapulco the week before in a close final against Rafael Nadal, but
in the course of it had insulted Nadal. Kyrgios is known for having
a big mouth. Apparently some Nadal fans did not take kindly to that
because he was booed when he came into the stadium. This may have put
him in a peevish mood—it doesn't take much for him—because he
smashed his racquet early on and in the end his occasional flashy
shots could not save him from Kohlschrieber's calm, even and
consistent play.
There was a long break after this so we
went down to the smaller courts again to see if we could catch some
doubles play, but could find no empty seats, so we returned to
Stadium 2 and went upstairs to Pietro's Pizzavino restaurant.
Fortified by their succulent if, for our taste, under-cooked pizza
(they were perhaps trying too assiduously to move people through), we
walked over to the Village Square where the John Stanley King band
was playing. While we were sitting in a pair of chairs listening, a
group of guys all costumed to look like young Bjorn Borgs, complete
with long blond wigs, danced through the crowd in a conga line.
Frieda took a few pictures and in one of them a cute kid she'd been
making faces at photo-bombed her. The band closed their set with
Bowie's “Space Oddity” and we headed back to Stadium 2 for the
Wozniacki match, which was next up. Wozniacki is a former #1 player,
currently ranked #13, that Frieda doesn't like. However, she was
eager to see Dominic Thiem, from Austria, who was scheduled to play
after Wozniacki. It was already getting cold again, and Stadium 2 was the warmest stadium, because it was more enclosed. Wozniacki
infuriated Frieda by dragging the match out to three sets as the
temperature dropped. I found the match so boring it reduced me to
watching the swarms of sphinx moths that had invaded the stadium.
The size of small hummingbirds, they swooped and dove and crashed
into the lights in suicidal frenzy, frying themselves. We'd never
seen them before but someone told us they'd been drawn to the rank
vegetation produced this year by the excessive winter rains. In the
midst of the third set the icy wind kicked up again, even our puff
jackets couldn't cope with it. Some Canadians sitting nearby
complained to us about the cold. By the time Thiem got on court we
could only hold out for three games before we had to flee to find
some warmth. Thiem ended up winning the whole tournament, defeating
Roger Federer in the final.
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| Court 9 |
Our last day, Sunday, we got to the
venue at 9:00 sharp, were able to park only a dozen yards from the
entrance, and went to nearly the head of the line. We got great
seats in the second row of our usual section of Stadium 2, where
Nishikori (#6 in the world) was to play Mannarino. This turned out
to be a very tight match, perhaps the best of the tournament for us.
It ran two and a half hours, finally going to Nishikori in a third
set tiebreak. The choice for our favorite match would be between
this one and the Karlovic/Coric match. Next the women came on, Kiki
Bertens (#6 in the world) vs. Johanna Konta. I was rooting for Konta
to pull off the upset. She had plenty of chances but choked every
time. I gave up on her after she lost the first set in a tiebreak
she could easily have won, and we went to Court 9, another small
stadium alongside Stadium 3 where we found some great seats on the
end for a match between two guys we'd never heard of, Alex Bolt and
Guido Pella.
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| Photobomb |
Will we go back next year? Well,
there's no doubt our ardor for tennis has gradually cooled, yet the
Tennis Garden remains a lovely venue, better, arguably, then either
Roland Garros or the US Open. As with civilization in general, the
tournament keeps improving every year in some ways, yet these
improvements are largely vitiated by overpopulation. Frieda made
reservations at the hotel to keep our options open. She's talking
about Saturday and Sunday with reserved seats next year. As I said at this
point last year: we'll see.
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