There is a way that Carlos Alcaraz bounces and floats and springs across the court when he is feeling it.
A moment in a tournament he cares desperately about arrives and everything that makes him what he is – the easy yet brutal power of the strokes, the surges of speed to reach balls he has no business getting, the way he gels with the oohing-and-ahhing crowd, even that spunky jog to his chair after he wins a game – it all just flows as naturally as a mountain stream.
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And this was the Alcaraz that emerged, after months of doubts and struggles, against Alexander Zverev at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, California, on Thursday on one of the biggest – and, as it turned out, most bizarre – days of the tennis year at its so-called ‘Fifth Slam’.
A swarm of bees, one of which stung him, looked like they might get the best of Alcaraz. They caused a nearly two-hour delay in his match and required the handiwork of a local beekeeper.
A STAR IS BORN
Beekeeper Lance Davis is the GOAT#TennisParadise pic.twitter.com/GWnJWP66cJ
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 15, 2024
After a few deep breaths and some intense mind-work, the Alcaraz who mercilessly smothers opponents, but does it with a smile, spent the following hour curling winners down the line on the run and feathering drop shots just over the net.
“Never seen something like this before,” he said when it was over. He was talking about the bees, not his play. Big day. Big tournament. That’s what he is supposed to do, what he used to do all the time. Zverev, a 6-3, 6-1 loser, never had a chance.
Indian Wells, as everyone calls this event, has long billed itself as the ‘Fifth Slam’, as in, ‘We know there are these four tournaments known as the Grand Slams (Wimbledon, and the U.S., French and Australian Opens) that are really important, but this one is nearly as big.’
Bee swarm aside, if there was ever a day that Indian Wells wanted to make its case, it was Thursday, with all eight quarterfinal matches happening in a collision of boldface tennis names, a schedule and a cast of characters that rarely coalesce. In rapid succession, so many of the sport’s biggest stars took to the courts with the kind of urgency they only bring when important things are on the line.
There were so many big names on the schedule that Jannik Sinner of Italy, recent winner of the Australian Open and the consensus best player in the world right now, and Coco Gauff, the biggest star in American tennis, were relegated to the smaller, second stadium. So was Tommy Paul, the last American man standing, and his opponent, Casper Ruud, a three-time Grand Slam finalist.
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Why? Well, Iga Swiatek, the world No 1, was taking on Caroline Wozniacki, a former world No 1, and Alcaraz, the once and likely future world No 1 and biggest rising star in the sport, was taking on Zverev, the reigning Olympic gold medallist.
Nighttime brought a duel between Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, the 2021 U.S. Open champion and a six-time Grand Slam finalist, and Holger Rune of Denmark, the brash 20-year-old who has become a mainstay of the top 10. Blame them for nudging an enticing duel between Maria Sakkari, the No 9 seed, against Emma Navarro, the surging young American, onto Stadium 2.
It sure seems like Fifth Slam material; though that could be more marketing than truth, depending on who you ask and the criteria.
Indian Wells won’t ever be able to match the Grand Slams in history. Those events have been around, in one iteration or another, for more than a century. The tournament that is now the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells only started 50 years ago. Its current location, the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, opened in 2000.
Tommy Haas, the former player from Germany who is now its tournament director, said that when he first came on the tour in the 1990s, players considered the Miami Open the Fifth Slam. But over the years, Crandon Park in Key Biscayne, Florida, started crumbling, costing that tournament some luster.
And then the new facility at Indian Wells opened and it was like nothing else in the game, as good as, and by some estimates, even better than what players experience in the Grand Slams. There are 29 courts in Indian Wells, including two stadiums, the largest with 16,000 seats, seven other competition courts, and 20 practice courts.
The location near the inland resort city of Palm Springs, around a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles, also has a vast grass field where competitors can play soccer, train, toss a frisbee, lift weights in the outdoor gym or hob-nob with the swarms of fans by the fence in the California sun, the desert mountains rising about a mile to the east.
The billionaire owner of the tournament, Larry Ellison, takes good care of them. Many are loaned BMWs to drive while they are here. The best players, men and women, can get put up at luxury resorts nearby.
One of the things that makes the four Grand Slams special is the way they each evoke the places they inhabit – the easy joy of Melbourne at the Australian Open, the elegance of Paris in Roland Garros, the grandeur of England at Wimbledon, the bustle, energy and noise of New York at the U.S. Open.
If that’s a box that a big-time tournament needs to tick, Indian Wells, with its laid-back California vibe, pulls it off. Players seem to breathe easier here than they do at any other tournament.
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“It’s called the fifth Grand Slam and I know why,” Alcaraz, who is the defending men’s champion, said last week. “I feel so peaceful here.”
Unlike plenty of other tournaments outside the Grand Slams, Indian Wells pays equal prize money to men and women. It also takes equality one step further: the singles finals for the men and women happen on the same day.
“Obviously, our goal is to say, ‘OK, what can we do better next year?’,” Haas said. “How can we keep raising the bar to have that statement of, ‘Yeah, this is unofficially, but maybe one day, officially the Fifth Slam?’.”
Italians and Spaniards and Canadians, and Americans from Florida and Ohio, may quibble with that concept, especially when it comes to ranking which tournaments they want to win more than the others. Each of those places hosts a top-level tour event with both women and men.
If Indian Wells is the Fifth Slam, then players would presumably want to win it more than other tournaments besides the Grand Slams. Taylor Fritz certainly did this week before his round of 16 defeat by Rune on Wednesday, but he’s Californian.
Swiatek said she has no such list once the sport moves beyond the Grand Slams. “Doesn’t really matter if I win Doha (in Qatar) or I win Indian Wells or Montreal (Canada) or Cincinnati,” she said the other day. “A tournament is a tournament. I want to win every tournament that I play at.”
Gauff, who grew up in Delray Beach, Florida, has a list. Indian Wells is in the second slot. “Miami being a home tournament, that would be a dream as well,” she said.
Her dream for an Indian Wells title, and those of seven other big names, was very much alive after she survived a day of miserable serving – 17 double faults. Seriously. That forced her to spend the afternoon scrambling and out-rallying Yue Yuan of China.
Gauff said afterwards she likely would have lost this kind of match not long ago, before she figured out how to not let one sub-par part of her game not affect the others, especially at the business end of a big tournament.
“Just trying to also not be too self-critical of myself where it damages me,” Gauff said.
She hit the practice courts when it was over and banged serves for a while. She wants this one.
Not that anyone playing Thursday didn’t. All across the sprawling grounds, the intensity and nerve levels ran high.
Medvedev and Rune had an icy stare-down at the net after Rune caught up with a Medvedev drop shot and fired at his belly – or maybe a little lower – from close range and the Russian didn’t see his apology gesture. Medvedev got the last word in that one, prevailing 7-5, 6-4.
Medvedev vs. Rune is getting a little spicy 🌶#IndianWells | #TennisParadisepic.twitter.com/gSMJUNekXe
— BNP Paribas Open (@BNPPARIBASOPEN) March 15, 2024
You might have missed it if you were watching Navarro and Sakkari slugging it out for almost three hours in front of a few hundred bundled-up fans braving the crisp desert night while the players burned around the court sleeveless. They traded comebacks and blistering backhands and forehands and leads until the end, when Sakkari staged a final surge and triumphed 5-7, 6-2, 6-4.
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Ruud, owner of one of the game’s most lethal forehands, shanked four of them in a crucial game late in the third set against Paul. The American prevailed a game later (6-2, 1-6, 6-3), riding adrenaline and smacking serves as hard as 137mph across the finish line.
Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine reeled off the first nine games against Anastasia Potapova of Russia, but still somehow felt like it could all slip away with a few ill-played points. “How exactly is 6-0, 3-0 a scary score if you are on the right side of it?” she was asked. “I’m playing quarterfinals of a 1000 (event), so it cannot be relaxing,” Kostyuk said.
Swiatek ultimately had perhaps the most relaxing day, as Wozniacki had to retire with an injury early in the second set. It didn’t start out that way, though, as she put Swiatek in a 4-1 hole early on.
Sinner rolled to a fairly straightforward 6-3, 6-3 win over Jiri Lehecka of the Czech Republic, but his next match figures to be far less so.
That’s because Alcaraz awaits in another duel between two players who show every sign of embarking on an era-defining rivalry. Good friends off the court, they have endured wars on it, including a five-set, five-hour-plus marathon that ended at nearly 3am at the U.S. Open in 2022.
Alcaraz will remember that match forever, just like he will never forget Thursday’s quarterfinal, though for different reasons.
The Spaniard is scared of bees, which was plain for everyone to see as he expressed his discomfort with restarting the match to a local beekeeper named Lance Davis and a tournament supervisor.
There were still bees in the corner of the court, he told them. You’ll be fine, they told him. He wasn’t so sure.
After another few minutes and some deep breaths, Alcaraz agreed to warm up once more and saw just another one or two.
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“I tried to not think about the bees anymore,” he said. “I tried to stay focused on the ball, stay focused on the point. It was a really important game for me. I surprised myself that I stayed focused on the match, not on the bees.”
Soon, Alcaraz was doing those Alcaraz-like things again.
Why not? A second title in the Fifth Slam beckoned.
(Top photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
