The Indian Wells Masters (now sponsored by BNP Paribas and officially called the BNP Paribas Open) is an annual tennis tournament held in Indian Wells, California, United States.
The tournament is a Masters 1000 event on the men's tour and is a Premier Mandatory event on the women's tour having as main sponsor the French bank BNP Paribas. Between 1974 and 1990 it was a major tournament of the Grand Prix Tennis Tour and part of the Grand Prix Championship Series. The event, held in March, is one of two tour events (besides the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Florida) in which main draw play extends beyond eight days. The women's main draw usually starts on Wednesday and the men's main draw starts on Thursday. Both finals are held on Sunday of the following week. Both singles main draws include 96 players in a 128-player grid, with the 32 seeded players getting a bye to the second round.
The tournament is played on hard courts and is the best attended tennis tournament outside the four Grand Slam tournaments, with over 370,000 visitors during the event. It has the second largest tennis stadium in the world.
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“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“Disciples be damned. It’s not interesting. It’s only the masters that matter. Those who create.”
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)