US Open Series

Debra Rose covered the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells for TennisGrandStand. In this first part in a three-part series of her reports from the tournament, Debra shares her experience at this tournament.
As I have always done in years past on my trips to the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California, when I enter the grounds each day, I make my initial perusal around the practice courts, partially to see who’s there and partially to reacquaint myself, especially on my first day. Grassy field where players warm up and relaxFriday, my first day around live tennis in about a year, was especially exciting. In a bit of a rut due to my inability to land my dream job and toiling away in a boring, windowless office in front of a computer all day for almost two months, I needed this break to go to Indian Wells more than I had in the past. And while I was representing TennisGrandStand at the event as a member of the media, it was important to me to experience the event “on the ground” so that I could relay the best possible accounting of my time at the tournament. I wanted to experience it just like a fan would, so that my reports would be accurate and authentic.
Walking around Friday morning, the intoxicating smell of the plentiful flowers enveloped me; they are everywhere and in perfect full bloom. Marat Safin wandered past me; Carlos Moya, playing a little pre-practice soccer on the big grassy field where the players often warm up ran out of the fenced area to recover the ball that had fallen out, and he nearly fell on his face. And I knew I was back at a tennis tournament, finally. After acquainting myself with the media surroundings (to be discussed in Part Two of this Series), I sat in this beautiful covered area outside the media/player cafeteria to write these notes about my initial reactions. Snow-capped Mountains on Sunday morningIt was mostly empty, as many players and the media don’t come around until later in the day. I sat back, and thought to myself. Somehow, in the midst of the beauty of the snow-capped mountains surrounding the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in all directions, and the bright beating desert sun clamoring in around me from every direction, I realized that for the next four days, I could forget how much it all was costing me; it didn’t seem to matter how much money I was missing out on by missing three days of work. Somehow, being there and soaking it all in was just allowing me to forget it all, live in the moment, and just have a great time for four days. And what a better place to do it than at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, which must be one of the most beautiful tennis venues in the world.
In addition to the stunning natural beauty surrounding th grounds, Indian Wells is an easy tournament to enjoy. The practice courts – of which there must be about ten – stretch around Stadium 3 and behind Courts 7 and 8 in an L-shaped fashion (peek at the tournament grounds here). The main front gate empties the throngs of fans right at the end of the practice courts. When I enter through that way, I enjoy breaking away from the path most of the fans take; instead of walking straight through to the main center, I like to take a left and walk along the practice courts. When I go to any tournament, but particularly Indian Wells, I really love watching practices. So every day when I entered the grounds, I swung around the practice courts.
So on a picture-perfect if slightly breezy Friday, the first match I went into was the 11am first round match between Nicolas Massu and Janko Tipsarevic. Considering that both Chilean and Serbian fan groups are vociferous and plentiful, this was an inevitably boisterous encounter. But Stadium 3 seemed to have an even bigger buzz than normal. In years’ past, the courts have been empty for the 11am matches, especially on Friday, when people are less likely to be able to get off of work or away from school. As you can see in the picture, it may look kind of empty, but from what I remember of the past couple years, this was actually a big crowd. And after the first three games took a long time to finish, I had a feeling this would end up being a long one (and I was right, it ended up taking over three hours to complete). And my premonition about the crowd size turned out to be spot on – the tournament set a new all-time record of over 330,000 spectators throughout the event.
The thing with going to a tennis tournament – especially one as big as the Pacific Life Open – is that there is so much going on around the grounds at any one time that for someone like me who wants to single-handedly try to see it all, it’s nearly impossible to stay in the same place for more than a little while at a time. I love tennis, and I love tennis matches. But sitting down on hard uncomfortable bleachers and under the beating desert sun for three hours or even just one hour to see a whole match from start to finish is exceedingly more difficult than sitting at home watching a match from start to finish. Maybe it’s just my personality, but I just cannot sit through a complete tennis match live when I know that there are lots of other matches and interesting practices to see at the same time.
Adding to my inability to stay in one place for too long is the fact that at the Pacific Life Open, almost like clockwork, new players come out to the practice courts every hour on the hour. Because the Pacific Life Open is a two-week event, players get days off and practice together for the full hour. For me, this is more interesting than seeing matches. I can get up close and personal, observe how players interact with their coaches, how players interact with their fans, and which players practice with each other. I’m an observer, so for me one of the interesting differences between the men’s and women’s tours is the player interaction. On the women’s tour, at least at Indian Wells, the players practice much less with each other and much more with their (usually male) coaches and (almost always male) hitting partners. The men, on the other hand, practice with each other. So for me, watching men’s practices is fascinating because there’s that added dimension of seeing how these players interact with each other. Invariably, I always see a few combinations that I find surprising. This year, surprises included: Andy Roddick and Nikolay Davydenko, John Isner and Richard Gasquet, and Roger Federer and Carlos Berlocq.
One of the most remarkable things about Indian Wells is how the practice courts are so fan-accessible. Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, and Maria Sharapova attract the most crowds by far. This year, add Novak Djokovic to that. Roddick could have gone onto that empty grassy field…For them, the sell-out weekend crowds are somewhat of a nightmare. But the way the practice courts are set up help a bit; there are four “main” practice courts where a lot of the top players practice. It’s a little easier for them, because they can hop across one sidewalk from their safe grassy field and avoid the masses. Behind that, there is a stretch of about six practice courts, almost all of which have plenty of viewing space in between them. Something interesting for me to observe is how each player deals with the crowds of fans who want pictures and autographs. Even for those more exposed practice courts, the tournament makes it easy for players to avoid the hordes by setting up golf cart transportation that runs behind all of the courts. So it’s interesting to see which players take advantage and which don’t.
He’s taken an awful lot of bad press lately, but Andy Roddick signs the most autographs of any of the top stars – by far. Instead of crossing the sidewalk and taking refuge in the grassy area like his peers, he actually chooses to walk around – on the public sidewalks – signing and joking with fans the whole way. They may seem like small gestures, but you can hear and feel the buzz when a player treats his or her fans really well; it adds to the tournament experience. And when players pass by without signing – as the case with Jo-WilfriedTsonga (who, as the Australian Open “Player of the Moment,” had a lot of fans watching his practices), who did not sign at all, the disappointment among the younger children he rejected is palpable.
You can to go the rest of TennisGrandStand or a number of other sites to read about the matches I saw, so I won’t bore you with those. Instead, I’d rather talk about some of the more interesting things I saw:

• They were filming the annual US Open Series commercials. Apparently Justin Gimelstob is going to be some sort of emcee and may have been wearing some cheesy drawn-on makeup… regardless, it made quite a pretty background and I hope that some of the scenery will be used (in the past couple years, the commercials have been exclusively inside the bus pretty much).US Open Series Bus
• The grounds at Indian Wells are huge, and thousands (as many as 21,000 on Saturday, in fact) of people fill every inch of them each day. Yet somehow, when a big star comes out, that court is packed within 30 seconds. The same thing happened any time there was an upset or a close exciting match. It’s uncanny how fast word travels around the grounds!
• The first round doubles match between Arnaud Clement and Michael Llodra and Marcelo Melo and Andre Sa was held on Court 5, one of the smallest courts. It was an 11am match, and the court was packed. I mean standing room only behind the three rows of seats on each side of the court. All around me, people were talking about how much they love doubles. The guy next to me is asking me about the philosophical differences between Llodra playing with Clement or Julien Benneteau (who he won the Las Vegas title with the week before). The Indian Wells crowd is a knowledgeable and passionate tennis crowd. They want to see doubles, and the tournament makes it so hard for them to do so (but more on this in Part 3 of my series).
• Also interesting to me from this doubles match: Clement and Llodra won the toss, but actually deferred choice. I’d never seen that before. These little things like paying attention to the coin toss and observing the smaller details are the things we miss on TV and the things that to me, make the sport a more interesting one.
• One of the funniest moments for me all weekend was watching Luis Horna and Juan Monaco during their “practice.” While a lot of the European and South American players warm up and down on the grassy firled playing soccer, Horna and Monaco did it on the tennis court, and it made for a rather amusing scene. Check out a short video of it here.
• Shortly after Andy Roddick was upset by Tommy Haas in the second round match, he was outside reuniting with Haas’s new coach, Dean Goldfine’s, family. Yes, Roddick is my favorite player so perhaps this was of more interst to me than it might be to others, but seeing him so soon after his loss laughing and having fun with Goldfine’s young children gave an interesting insight into what he and these other players go through on a daily basis. I suppose Roddick might be better at getting over losses than other players, but it was still interesting to see how quickly he seemed to get over what should have been a fairly disappointing loss.
• On Sunday, Djokovic and Sharapova practiced at the same time on adjoining courts. Whose bright idea was this?!?!
• Against Igor Andreev, Mardy Fish won the toss and chose to receive. For a guy with a huge serve that is the cornerstone of his game, I was surprised. Perhaps it was just my fault for not noticing it, but later in the week Fish said he actually prefers to get his feet under him and start off returning where he can. I found this interesting.
• Although this is a combined event, I think it is a great one for fans of both the ATP and WTA tours. They don’t get in the way of each other. There are enough practice courts so that there are always some men and some women players practicing at any one time and the organization does an excellent job of putting an even number of men’s and women’s matches on each court so it’s easy to focus on one or the other, or both.Guga practicing the backhand
• I find it interesting that certain players seem to almost never be on the grounds. A few players I almost never saw: Lleyton Hewitt, Maria Sharapova, and Bob and Mike Bryan. I think it’s a shame for the fans that these players aren’t on the grounds more, especially the Bryans since they are pretty much the face of doubles in the US.
• Gustavo Kuerten practiced several times on the grounds. This was a wonderful surprise as he wasn’t even playing the tournament. He drew very sizable crowds and it was a joy to see backhand up close.

For me, running around between bits and pieces of matches and practices and seeing these interesting tidbits is the best way to see a tournament, and the Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells is a great place to see world-class tennis and learn a lot about the game at the same time. To sit and watch matches in the stadium all the way through is doing a disservice to the other great players in the draw and to those spectators who do it. Had I done that, I’m sure I would have seen some great tennis, but I would have missed an awful lot of special things, too. Over my four days at the Pacific Life Open I tried to soak in as much as possible. It was tiring and frenetic at times, but also reinvigorating, fun, and exciting. Stay tuned for two more parts of my reports, which will give a more behind-the-scenes view of how this event runs.
Please take a look at all of the pictures I took:

• Friday, March 14
• Saturday, March 15
• Sunday, March 16
• Monday, March 17

Also, I took a few short videos, check those out here