INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—“This is like coming to another planet for us,” the Belgian reporter behind me said, speaking for all of his fellow European journalists who make the trip to the California desert. Sitting in Stadium 2 on Saturday, on another sun-blasted day, with a sky so wide that you could see three jets streaking west at the same time, as if they were racing, I had to agree. For a Northern European or an East Coaster, it is a little Martian out here.
But there are plenty of humans on this landscape. It’s always bustling on the first Saturday at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, and it was again yesterday, when the grounds were sold out. It was also too nice to spend cooped in the press and interview rooms, so I tried to wander. My travels were interrupted midway through by Donald Young’s upset of Andy Murray (am I the only person who didn’t consider that the most stunning upset of all time?), so I was pulled back inside late in the afternoon. Here’s what I saw while I could.
11:45 A.M.
“It’s Verdasco vs. another guy, uh, Bern-, Bernardi?”
This comes from a woman two rows behind me up in the bleachers behind Stadium 2. The player whom she’s trying unsuccessfully to identify is Richard Berankis. The Lithuanian is beating Fernando Verdasco, but his lead evaporates quickly.
There are many words that come to mind to describe Verdasco, but “wily” isn’t often one. Still, today he learns quickly to make Berankis reach up for heavy topspin shots and move to his left so he has to go to a slice on his backhand. Berankis fails at both, and when he calls for the trainer it soon becomes clear why. He gets his side worked on for a while, but to no avail. Early in the second set, he walks to the net and retires.
This is always a weird let down for the crowd. We get up and file out quietly, wondering to ourselves why we just spent an hour anticipating, watching, cheering for something that has ended so meaninglessly. The fans come to life when Verdasco autographs three balls and threatens to hit them into the crowd. The screams grow with each one. On the last, he has two sections standing and vying for it. He fakes to one area and finally sends it to another. Ninety-nine percent of the audience instantly goes silent with disappointment as two people wrestle with the ball. Verdasco seems to feel bad about it, so he grabs another ball, signs it, and hits it to the section that he by-passed the first time.
12:15 P.M.
Richard Gasquet fans, I have a suggestion. Catch him in practice. Like his great underachieving older brother Marat Safin, Gasquet can do it all here. With nothing on the line, he dictated play during a set against Tomas Berdych, and did it from way behind the baseline. All the creativity that we expect and never get from him was on display. In one rally, Berdych drilled a forehand down the line; Gasquet got there, came over a backhand severely and snapped the ball crosscourt at an angle I don’t think I’d seen before. Berdych stopped and stared.
Seeing how good the pros are in practice has always made me feel better about my own game. Just like us, they get tentative when the real points begin—a few minutes after leaving Gasquet, I caught sight of Nadal taking backhand after backhand on the rise, something he tends to do only when his confidence is very high during matches. It makes me think that the difference between the pros and us isn’t in there ability to handle pressure, but in the level of game they build up when the pressure is off.
12:30 P.M.
A few minutes later I come across John Isner practicing with French journeyman Adrian Mannarino. It’s an odd match-up: The big, backwards-hatted Georgian versus the small European with the scruff of a poverty-stricken 19th-century poet. Mannarino, like his countryman Gasquet, is a fine player to watch in practice. Like another countryman, Gilles Simon, he’s a deceptive ball-striker with a short and gentle backhand stroke, but he keeps popping the ball past Isner. The American finally can’t take it and fires a ball into the side fence.
I stand right behind Mannarino as he receives serve from Isner, whose size is remarkable even from this distance. They say that tall servers and baseball pitchers appear to be closer to you when they deliver the ball. I’d never been sure of that, but it’s indisputably true in this case. Isner’s head seems to float in the vicinity of the service line as he looks over at Mannarino. And when he connects on his kick serve, it seems impossible that anyone could possibly get to it. Mannarino doesn’t even try.
2:30 P.M.
Ivan Ljubicic is winning, but Juan Martin del Potro seems to be on track. He still looks a little slower than his best, with a little less pop on the ball. But he puts together a couple vintage del Potro points, the ones where a couple shots will come in to him so low that you think there’s no way that a guy that big can get down for them, lift them over the net, and still keep them in the court. But he does. I think part of del Potro’s appeal is that there’s something unlikely about his game and his success. But not too unlikely: From Melbourne to Del Ray to here, he’s progressing the way you would expect him to progress.
There’s some drama in the stands around me, too. With vast rows of empty sets in front of us, another reporter and I move down from the press seats to sit in a box a few rows closer to the court. On the next changeover, a guy and his wife walk down and stop at the end of our row. We don’t look at them; we wait to get the boot.
“They’re in our seats,” he says. They hesitate. The chair umpire calls time.
“Let’s sit up here for now,” his wife says. They walk into the row behind us.
On the next change of ends, two people walk down and tell them that they’re in their seats.
“You see,” the man says with frustration, “now it’s all messed up because those guys are in our seats.” Still they don’t boot us out. They just move down in the same row. Crisis averted.
4:15 P.M.
“Attention press, Andy Murray is on his way to the interview room now.” It’s become a tradition, started by Andre Agassi, that a top player who is an upset victim comes straight to the interview room afterward to get his punishment out of the way. No one gets punished quite as much as Murray, because no one else has a crew of reporters following him everywhere he goes. As the press scrambles to sit down, Murray stares blankly and tugs at his hair. He doesn’t get the full treatment about why he’s a failure this time, the way he typically does at a Grand Slam. As always, he speaks from behind a wall of monotone; Murray has learned to live from inside a shell when it comes to the press. Like last year, you wonder if his loss in the Aussie final makes it tougher for him to get motivated for the Masters afterward because there’s really nothing to be gained for him here. If he wins Indian Wells, all he’s going to hear anyway is, “Now do you think you’re ready to do it at a Slam?”
4:30 P.M.
Between the all-encompassing heat of early afternoon and the chilly breeze of evening, there's a two or three hour period here on Saturday when the air is perfect, so perfect it draws me back outside and away from the grim duties of hearing horror stories about Murray's play.
I’m drawn down the steps and over to Court 7 and 8, which have been upgraded with new, larger sets of bleachers. Gilles Simon and Rainer Schuettler are playing on 7. Indian Wells has the slowest courts around, and this is slow-court tennis at either its finest or its dullest, depending on your point of view—I enjoy the long, patient rallies, personally. Hitting big from the baseline is almost not worth it here, because those shots aren’t rewarded with winners. So Simon and Schuettler take pace off and put it back on, try a crosscourt and then a down the line, and almost never move into the net no matter how tempting it might be. All in all, it's good, soothing, zone-out tennis
I’m sitting in a spot where you can see half of Court 8. As Simon and Schuettler move each other around on 7, I catch glimpses of the doubles match on 8 between Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Jelena Jankovic, and Gisela Dulko and Flavia Pennetta. It makes for a nice contrast with the men. Over there, the atmosphere is light; fans laugh and players smile even as points are going on. After watching another long rally between the men I look up and see Pennetta running back, a point just finished, with a grin, as the crowd cheers. I don’t know what just happened, but that’s the image that sticks with me from a Saturday afternoon in the tennis garden. It's not a bad image to keep.