Indian Wells

Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, the defending champion in the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament, was ousted by former No. 1 player Ana Ivanovic of Serbia Tuesday. The score was 6-3, 6-1. Wozniacki entered the event ranked and seeded fourth. Ivanovic was seeded 15th. RELATED: U.S. males really aren't delivering tennis wins these days Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal rivalry is aging but it's still aces Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova on collision course at BNP Paribas Open

On a hot summer-like Sunday afternoon, in a stadium that rises out of the Southern California desert like a huge misplaced castle, Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal slid onto his back and into the bright lights of his sport once again. It was match point of the men's final in the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. The clock showed that he had been out there 21/2 hours. A crowd of 16,741 squeezed into this 16,100-seat spectator mansion had waited for this moment. Winning this tournament is always a huge deal, but they all knew that, for Nadal, this would be even bigger.

Former No. 1-ranked player Ana Ivanovic of Serbia, 15th seeded this year at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament, won her first match Saturday. She defeated Johanna Larsson of Sweden, 6-1, 6-2. Ivanovic played a close-to-the-vest match, with only four unforced errors, and won with a 104 mph ace. She had Larsson on the ropes throughout, and ended up converting five of 17 break points. Ivanovic won the French Open in 2008 at age 20 and spent three months at No. 1 shortly after that.

It is no small task to steal the thunder from the current comeback kid of tennis, Rafael Nadal. But that's exactly what a 6-foot-6 rocket launcher from Argentina did Saturday in the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. Argentina has had a great week. A new pope and now this. Juan Martin del Potro won one of those matches that goes beyond compelling to spellbinding. When he beat Novak Djokovic in the late afternoon men's semifinal, he did so in one of those tennis faceoffs that becomes edge-of-your-seat on every point.

Two of the top contenders for the men's singles title at the BNP Paribas Open advanced with ease in early play Sunday, on another day when this Indian Wells Tournament sold all the tickets it is allowed to by local parking authorities. That would be 32,000. The winners were Juan Martin del Potro, seeded ninth, and Rafael Nadal, seeded second. Del Potro, the Argentine who stunned Roger Federerin the 2009 U.S. Open final and then faded from the scene for a bit with injuries and slipped all the way to No. 90, beat Marinko Matosevic of Australia, 7-5, 6-2. Nadal, 10-time Grand Slam champion and two-time winner here, ousted Leonardo Mayer of Argentina, 6-1, 6-3. Were the seedings to hold to form, Del Potro would meet No. 3 Federer in the quarterfinals and that winner would face Nadal in a semifinal.

Top-seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus kept her hot hand going Sunday in thre women's final of the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament. On a cold and windy day, Azarenka beat second-seeded Maria Sharapova of Russia, 6-2, 6-3. That brought Azarenka the first-ever $1 million winner's check for the women's side of this event. It also brought her year-to-date record to 23-0. She won the Australian open, beating Sharapova in that final, too, and now has won the title in five of the last six tournaments she has entered.

Russian veteran Nadia Petrova returned an important favor Monday in a day-session tennis match at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. She beat Australia's Samanatha Stosur, the reigningU.S. Openchampion, 6-1, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), and avenged a gut-wrenching 3 hour 16 minute defeat in Flushing Meadows. That was the longest U.S. Open match since the introduction of the tiebreaker system. "After that loss in New York, it has been hard," Petrova said. "I was very pumped up today.

The prestigious Indian Wells tennis tournament, by attendance and image the fifth largest event of its sport in the world, has changed names. What had been the Pacific Life Open on Wednesday became the BNP Paribas Open. This year's event, set for March 9-22, has added the financial stability of one of the largest banks in the world, French-based BNP Paribas.

Irina Falconi, a 21-year-old from Atlanta, played her first-ever main draw match Thursday at the BNP Paribas Open after receiving a wild card invitation. With the help of an injury to her opponent, Alexandra Dulgheru of Romania, who retired in the second set with a knee problem, Falconi won 4-6, 5-2, ret., then entertained with a story she had also told on a blog she writes for the WTA Tour. Falconi, who was born in Ecuador and moved to the U.S. when she was 3, is staying at the nearby Hyatt Grand Champions resort and she made a rookie mistake.

As day wandered into late night and several thousand tennis balls were de-fuzzed in the BNP Paribas Open on Wednesday, the Other Guys jockeyed for position in the men's singles draw. The Other Guys are those not named Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer. They are the aspiring, the glass-half-full men, all waiting for lightning to strike. They are great tennis players in their own right, but if this were the Academy Awards instead of a tennis tournament, they'd all be Best Supporting Actors.

Caroline Wozniacki made it back to the BNP Paribas Open women's final at Indian Wells on Friday night, fighting her way through a 2-hour 28-minute marathon that was mostly distinguishable by moonballs and service breaks. Eighth-seeded Wozniacki of Denmark beat fourth-seeded Angelique Kerber of Germany, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5. In the deciding set, there were seven service breaks, and Wozniacki held on despite giving up leads of 4-1 and 5-3. There were 14 service breaks in the match. Wozniacki, a former No. 1 player who took the BNP Paribas Open title in 2011, will play the winner of the late match between Russian players Maria Kirilenko and Maria Sharapova.

On the day after its longest day, the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament at Indian Wells had the longest lull in the action Thursday. Two women's stars, No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, and No. 7 Samantha Stosur, pulled out of separate quarterfinals and the day session at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden was over in the main stadium by late afternoon. That included a fill-in doubles match. Wednesday's day session ran so late on the Stadium Court that it pushed the eventual finish of the night matches to 1:50 a.m. Azarenka defaulted because of a right ankle injury that she said she had been nursing for a while and hoped to be able to keep healthy enough to defend her title here.

On a long day of tennis in the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, fifth-seeded former Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic was among the casualties in matches that finished during daylight hours. She lost in a three-set battle, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, to Maria Kirilenko of Russia. Kirilenko, seeded 15th and getting closer to a top-10 ranking, defeated No. 3 Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland in her previous match and said afterward, "I can compete, and as you can see, I can beat them.

It would be hard to determine whether tennis gave itself a shot in the arm or shot itself in the foot Wednesday night. The BNP Paribas Open is a premier event, played in a gorgeous stadium at a gorgeous time of the year in the Southern California desert. It is one of the truly prestigious sports events in the world. Its top officials are talking about total attendance reaching 400,000 in a few years. Wednesday brought a dream schedule. Set to start in the afternoon were separate matches involving Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, two truly marquee stars.

Andy Murray still doesn't pack 'em in, even on a sultry desert-perfect night in a big-time tennis event. Not even when he has taken his game to a level projected by many to be unreachable by the always-solid Scot. In Murray's case, the perception hasn't quite caught up to the reality. In the minds of most, he remains No. 4, the player who is a notch below Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Tuesday night's offering, at the BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden was merely a round-of-16 match.

For a while Tuesday, the No. 1 men's tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, didn't play up to his rating and the No. 31 player, Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, played well above his. But, as so often happens in big tournaments such as the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, form returns. Djokovic's did late in the first set, after trailing, 4-1 and 5-2. That was helped by several key double faults by Dimitrov, which became gift wrapping in a 7-6 (4), 6-1 victory by Djokovic. That marked 15 consecutive victories to start the year for the Serbian star, who won his third straight Australian Open in January and has won six Grand Slam event titles, including five in the last nine majors.

Sunday was a tennis day of wine and roses in the desert. Little of great news value happened in the BNP Paribas Open, yet the time spent was delightfully palatable. It was a buffet of sights and sounds and smells. The main stadium, which holds 16,100 and where lots of obvious stuff was happening ? Andy Roddick, Kim Clijsters and Roger Federer winning early-round matches at Indian Wells ? seemed to be matched in activity by the world outside its walls. With the temperature in the mid-80s, just short of uncomfortably sweltering, it was a time to walk the grounds, find a tree and take a nap. There were moms and dads and blankets and kids in Crocs everywhere.

This year's prestigious event in Indian Wells is not so much a tennis tournament as a tightrope walk. Some things will be the same. The sun will mostly shine and the sky will remain mostly cloudless. People will come from Indio and India to soak up the ambience and lounge on Charlie Pasarell's plush lawn amid shade trees in the middle of the complex.

Time. It's a topic that doesn't much affect Roger Federer. The owner of 17 major titles and the defending champion of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells never wastes time. He certainly didn't on Monday, taking only 61 minutes to defeat Ivan Dodig of Croatia, 6-3, 6-1, in the third round at Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Federer doesn't fiddle with his clothing or walk in dizzying circles after a tense point. Whether he hits a swift winning shot after a short rally or mishits a losing shot after running and running during a long point, Federer just moves ahead.

Mardy Fish gets a dispensation. He is seeded 32nd in the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells and, by the numbers, was expected to beat fellow American Bobby Reynolds, 30, a qualifier, who if he has gained any stardom, it has come from anchoring the Washington Kastles during the World Team Tennis season. But Fish has been tentative and emotional since discovering last summer that he has an uneven heartbeat. He had a procedure done on that most vital organ and didn't play in the Olympics.