Photo credit: Rob Stone/@RobStoneTennis
By Alix Ramsay
For those at the sharp end of the sport, it is rare that a tour event really, really matters.
Yes, the BNP Paribas Open is a Masters 1000 and, yes, it is played in “Tennis Paradise” (they love that moniker here) but it is not a grand slam. The history of tennis is not built here. But this year might be slightly different.
As Carlos Alcaraz and Jack Draper, Holger Rune and Daniil Medvedev square up to each other in Saturday’s semi-finals it does really matter. For each of them, there is something personal riding on the result here this week.
For Draper, he is desperate to show that he does belong in the company of the top men. So often he has shown that he has the game to beat anyone over the best of three sets but so often injury has stopped him in his tracks. For him, it was always one pace forward and two paces back. Even last year, as he finally managed a full injury-free season and best-ever ranking of No.12, he was felled by tendonitis in his right hip during the off season and was unable to train.
This week, though, all his ducks seem to be in a neat little row: he is fit, he is playing well (not a set dropped so far) and he is ready. This could be his moment. This should be his moment. If it is, he will crack the world’s top 10 for the first time.
Alcaraz, his rival in the last four, is desperate to prove that he can be the consistent, serial champion like Jannik Sinner (who hoovered up eight titles to Alcaraz’s four last year). And after winning Wimbledon last summer, he made his ambitions perfectly clear: “At the end of my career, I want to sit at the same table as the big guys.”
If he wins a third consecutive Indian Wells title, he will have matched Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic as the only men to have achieved the magic desert “threepeat” (another popular term out here but one that still grates on the nerves of the grammar nerds).
Then there is Rune: he so desperately wants to grow up to be Alcaraz that it hurts. Born six days earlier than the Spaniard, Rune has watched his nearest contemporary charge to the top of the rankings, collecting grand slam titles with carefree abandon, while he has only ever shown occasional flashes of brilliance and potential.
Meanwhile Medvedev seems to have been lumbered with the role of the perpetual runner up. When he was fit and firing on all cylinders in 2023 (that year he won five titles, all bar one on hard courts, and reached the US Open final), he ran into Alcaraz in the Indian Wells final and took a thumping. No matter: our hero got another crack at the Spaniard last year. And got clumped again. He so wants to stop that pattern of results.
Daniil is nobody’s fool. He knows full well that, at the age of 29, his chances of collecting another grand slam title (he was the 2021 US Open champion) are getting slimmer with each passing year. The young lads are getting better; Daniil is simply getting older. But he also knows that, on his day, he can be the great disruptor. He had no clue what the word actually meant when this was put to him, but he got the general gist: when he is playing at his best, he can be a bugger to beat.
With a 2-1 winning record over the Dane – he beat Rune here last year in the quarters – his confidence should be in reasonable nick. And after celebrating like he’d just won the lottery when he beat Arthur Fils in a fiendishly tight three-setter on Thursday, his confidence was clearly rising already.
But it all comes down to Carlos. He is the man to beat on these courts. If the sun is splitting the trees and melting the spectators (many of whom appear to have had “work” done and blistering sunshine ain’t the best for cosmetic procedures) or if, like this year, it is cold with a howling wind, Carlos doesn’t care. He just plays. And wins. And smiles.
He and Draper have played four times in the past with Draper winning only the once. That was last summer at Queen’s Club, just after Alcaraz had won the French Open. In two of their other meetings – here two years ago and in Melbourne in January – Draper had to retire hurt with, respectively, an abdominal issue and a hip problem. Now that both of them are fit and in full flow, this could be a cracker.
“He’s obviously a great champion,” Draper said, “already doing amazing things in the game, so good for the sport not only for the players but for also spectators to watch him. He’s setting the benchmark really high, and that’s good for a player like myself because I watch him and play against him, and I think what I need to do to be at his level and to hopefully compete for big events.
“I think it would be a great match. He brings so much to the court, especially in these conditions. He absolutely loves these courts.
And yeah, it would be another opportunity for me to show, hopefully, that I belong at the top again.”
Alcaraz, too, is expecting fireworks both now and in the future. Believing that Draper is too good not to achieve at least some of his goals, he is expecting to meet the 6ft 4ins southpaw many times in the coming years when titles are on the line.
“I think he has a lot of rhythm, a lot of pace, great shots,” Alcaraz said. “I think his style of play suits pretty well to these conditions. I think his forehand with topspin bounce a lot, and big serve.
“I’m just excited about playing him again. It seems he’s in really good shape right now. I think he’s ambitious, and he always go for it. So that’s makes him a really tough opponent. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be one of the toughest on the tour in the future or in the next year. Just really happy to share these kind of moments with him. I also think it’s going to be a really good match to watch and to play.”
Whoever wins on Saturday has everything to play for in the final. Not just the money or that huge trophy that threatens every champion with a hernia if they try to lift it: this time it really, really matters. And we don’t see that very often.