The Fifth Grand Slam: Tennis in the Desert
Near Palm Springs, California
Every March, in a valley ringed by mountains and palm trees, the tennis world stages what many inside the sport quietly call the fifth Grand Slam.
The BNP Paribas Open, held at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, began its life as a modest desert circuit event in nineteen seventy-four in Tucson, Arizona, under the name the American Airlines Tennis Games. It bounced around Southern California through the late nineteen seventies before finding a permanent home in Indian Wells in nineteen eighty-seven.
The real transformation came in two thousand, when the tournament moved into a purpose-built facility that had been conceived at a scale that seemed absurdly ambitious for a desert town with fewer than five thousand permanent residents. Stadium One, the main court, holds sixteen thousand one hundred seats, making it the second largest outdoor tennis stadium in the world, trailing only Arthur Ashe Stadium at the United States Open.
Larry Ellison, the Oracle Corporation founder and one of the wealthiest people on earth, purchased the tournament and facility in two thousand nine. He continued expanding it, funding a complete renovation of Stadium One in two thousand seventeen that lowered the court surface, added a VIP club, rebuilt the suites, and added twenty-one restaurants and concession areas around the bowl.
The results are visible in the player fields. Indian Wells now draws full fields of every major ATP and WTA player, the kind of commitment that typically only a Grand Slam can command. The prize money approaches that of the Slams. The weather is reliably perfect. And the setting, a manicured oasis surrounded by the Santa Rosa Mountains, is unlike any other stop on the tour.
Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and Steffi Graf have all won here multiple times. In the conversation about which tournament best deserves the fifth Grand Slam designation, Indian Wells has few real rivals.
