March Madness #2: Vesnina takes Indian Wells by storm

It's madness, I tell you! Fuzzy yellow ball style. Follow along this week for our Top 17 takeaways and outtakes from the 2017 Sunshine Double in California and Florida.

Check out No. 3 here.

Elena Vesnina's biggest claims to fame on the WTA Tour before her Indian Wells singles triumph may have been these:

It may be fair to say that her BNP Paribas Open singles title puts her firmly among the game's elite in such a way as her other best performances, in singles and doubles, have not. She defeated compatriot Svetlana Kuznetsova in the Indian Wells finale to win the biggest singles title of her career at age 30.

What's more, a hilarious post-championship moment occurred when her trophy was snatched from the press-conference table where she sat to field reporters' questions about her final show-stopping performance:

It had to be returned to the court where Roger Federer had made fairly quick work of Stan Wawrinka in the men's final, as it turned out. Vesnina, to her credit, had a thoroughly winsome, disarming response to the non-incident. (And got her replica trophy later.)

She wouldn't be smiling terribly long, however. She moved to Miami Open play a couple days later and failed to win her opening match, a chagrined  loss to Ajla Tomljanovic, ranked No. 594 at the time but notably returning from an injury layoff. She then fell to qualifier Fanny Stollar in Charleston.

Still, for one-and-a-half wild weeks in the desert, Vesnina reigned over all comers. Sometimes that can be enough.