Charlie Pasarell

Charlie Pasarell has long been tennis' answer to baseball's Field of Dreams. Pasarell built it, and they came. Actually, Pasarell kept building, and the players kept coming. No singular sensation for this visionary of the sport. Monday in New York, the inductees to the International Tennis Hall of Fame were announced. They were Martina Hingis, 32, a women's star long before she was a woman; Thelma Coyne Long, 94, legendary Australian player; Cliff Drysdale, 71, a good player who achieved as much stature in the broadcast booth as on the court; Ion Tiriac, 73, the Romanian player and powerful European event promoter; and Pasarell, 69. It is difficult to determine what drove Pasarell's selection.

Charlie Pasarell has long been tennis' answer to baseball's Field of Dreams. Pasarell built it, and they came. Actually, Pasarell kept building, and the players kept coming. No singular sensation for this visionary of the sport. Monday in New York, the inductees to the International Tennis Hall of Fame were announced. They were Martina Hingis, 32, a women's star long before she was a woman; Thelma Coyne Long, 94, legendary Australian player; Cliff Drysdale, 71, a good player who achieved as much stature in the broadcast booth as on the court; Ion Tiriac, 73, the Romanian player and powerful European event promoter; and Pasarell, 69. It is difficult to determine what drove Pasarell's selection.

Early Sunday morning, long before the final of his tennis tournament was to be played on the center court that he dreamed of in the stadium that he built, the King Midas of the pro tennis world strolled his grounds and surveyed all that he had touched. And behold, it was gold. His real name is Charlie Pasarell, and he is quite young to be king, only recently turned 45. Around here, he is regularly called "the tennis prince of the desert."

The Three Musketeers of tennis are really bursting at the seams this year. It is their time. The sun is baking the Palm Springs desert most days now, and Charlie Pasarell, Ray Moore and Steve Simon are like 5-year-olds on Christmas morning. Their BNP Paribas Open starts Wednesday. The tickets are flying over the counter. The weather forecast is good, so far. Plus, almost every player you have ever heard of and wanted to see play, as well as dozens you haven't and don't, will be there, squeaking and grunting and hitting shots regular people can't imagine.

They came from places that tennis does not. Charlie Pasarell from the heat and streets of Puerto Rico, Arthur Ashe from the segregated courts of Richmond, Va. Theirs was a brotherhood born out of struggle, a brotherhood that began, shyly and tentatively, on a tennis court in Miami in 1955. "The first time I saw him, I played him," Pasarell recalled Saturday night from his home in Palm Springs. "It was the Orange Bowl Juniors and we were both 12. It was the quarterfinals and I won, 6-2, 2-6, 6-2.

For the last several years, officials at the Indian Wells tennis tournament, now the BNP Paribas Open, played the role of gracious hosts to software billionaire Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief executive of Oracle. This March, when the high-profile event takes place, Ellison will be doing the hosting. That's because he has purchased the event. The tournament, as close as you can get to Grand Slam status without the actual designation, has been principally owned and operated for its 35 years in the desert by Charlie Pasarell and Ray Moore, former tennis pros whose company is PM Sports Management.

The Who's-No. 1 soap opera that played out here in the Newsweek Champions Cup tennis tournament will be repeated in the next two weeks at the Lipton in Key Biscayne, Fla. Carlos Moya's loss to Mark Philippoussis in Sunday's final here left Moya 37 points ahead of Pete Sampras. Moya will remain No. 1 for two weeks no matter what, since there is no ranking change on the middle Monday at Lipton, same as at the Grand Slam events.

On Monday, Benjamin Kohlloeffel became the 10th NCAA singles champion from UCLA. The others: Jack Tidball (1933), Herbert Flam (1950), Larry Nagler (1960), Allen Fox (1961), Arthur Ashe (1965), Charlie Pasarell (1966) Jeff Borowiak (1970), Jimmy Connors (1971) and Billy Martin (1975).

The tennis tournament that has positioned itself as the next-best thing to the four majors on the tour calendar took another step to solidify that status Tuesday. The BNP Paribas Open, the Indian Wells event that gives Southern California an annual claim as host to all the sport's stars, announced that it would pay both men's and women's singles champions $1 million. That will make it the first combined men's and women's tour event to do so. The four Grand Slams, which are run by the International Tennis Federation rather than the ATP and WTA tours, pay seven-figure prizes to the winner, as do each tour's season-ending championships.

The phone rings. Charlie Pasarell answers it with a sigh. It might be Pete Sampras wanting a tee time at one of the area's golf courses. It might be Steffi Graf looking for an early-morning practice court. Maybe one of the players' mothers is unhappy with the hotel room he got for her. Some player may have forgotten where he parked the courtesy car. Perhaps someone collapsed from the heat--or from a previously undiagnosed disorder--out on the grandstand court. He glances up at a TV monitor.

The tennis tournament that has positioned itself as the next-best thing to the four majors on the tour calendar took another step to solidify that status Tuesday. The BNP Paribas Open, the Indian Wells event that gives Southern California an annual claim as host to all the sport's stars, announced that it would pay both men's and women's singles champions $1 million. That will make it the first combined men's and women's tour event to do so. The four Grand Slams, which are run by the International Tennis Federation rather than the ATP and WTA tours, pay seven-figure prizes to the winner, as do each tour's season-ending championships.

The desert tennis tournament that began 36 years ago as a nice little mom-and-pop, sit-on-the-lawn-and-watch event will put its international stature on display for the next two weeks. The BNP Paribas Open, annually the fifth-best attended tennis event in the world ? after the four Grand Slams ? will begin Monday with qualifying play and end March 20 with men's and women's singles finals that annually feature some of the top players in the world. The women's qualifying will be Monday and Tuesday, with admission free to the public.

Larry Ellison, the software billionaire and chief executive of Oracle, knows when tennis took hold of him. It's a date he can't quite pinpoint, but he remembers the moment. "I was watching television," Ellison said. " Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall were playing. It was when they had turned professional and pros weren't allowed to play the slams. Laver hit his first three serves to Rosewall's backhand. Rosewall hit winners off of each, all three perfect shots. Laver never went to his backhand again on the serve and won the match.

For the last several years, officials at the Indian Wells tennis tournament, now the BNP Paribas Open, played the role of gracious hosts to software billionaire Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief executive of Oracle. This March, when the high-profile event takes place, Ellison will be doing the hosting. That's because he has purchased the event. The tournament, as close as you can get to Grand Slam status without the actual designation, has been principally owned and operated for its 35 years in the desert by Charlie Pasarell and Ray Moore, former tennis pros whose company is PM Sports Management.

On Monday, Benjamin Kohlloeffel became the 10th NCAA singles champion from UCLA. The others: Jack Tidball (1933), Herbert Flam (1950), Larry Nagler (1960), Allen Fox (1961), Arthur Ashe (1965), Charlie Pasarell (1966) Jeff Borowiak (1970), Jimmy Connors (1971) and Billy Martin (1975).

Charlie Pasarell, merging his duties as tour guide and tournament director, recently wandered down to the empty secondary box office at Indian Wells Tennis Garden for the first time in months. He looked around and spotted leaves on the floor. That wasn't the problem. There were chairs from the luxury suites in the box office. "These aren't supposed to be here," he said.

It was the most heartening news I'd read since Berlin fell. It should have been on Page 1 of the paper. There it was, in the sports section. "Tennis Umpire Walks Out on Players," it said. Hurrah! I didn't know whether to throw my hat in the air or throw a party. But I'd been waiting a long time for this day. For the life of me, I don't know why it hadn't happened 10 years ago. I know if I'd been in a tennis ump's chair it would have.

The desert tennis tournament that began 36 years ago as a nice little mom-and-pop, sit-on-the-lawn-and-watch event will put its international stature on display for the next two weeks. The BNP Paribas Open, annually the fifth-best attended tennis event in the world ? after the four Grand Slams ? will begin Monday with qualifying play and end March 20 with men's and women's singles finals that annually feature some of the top players in the world. The women's qualifying will be Monday and Tuesday, with admission free to the public.

The Who's-No. 1 soap opera that played out here in the Newsweek Champions Cup tennis tournament will be repeated in the next two weeks at the Lipton in Key Biscayne, Fla. Carlos Moya's loss to Mark Philippoussis in Sunday's final here left Moya 37 points ahead of Pete Sampras. Moya will remain No. 1 for two weeks no matter what, since there is no ranking change on the middle Monday at Lipton, same as at the Grand Slam events.

Just in the last couple of weeks, they started moving the dirt around on Charlie Pasarell's Field of Dreams. There are huge graders, a dozen of them, and water trucks fighting to keep the desert dirt down. And there are men in hard hats, sleeves rolled up, poring over blueprints. Still, at this stage, the apple of Pasarell's eye is 145 acres of dust, sagebrush and nothingness at the intersection of Miles and Washington avenues in this resort city about 30 miles east of Palm Springs.