The early rounds of the BNP Paribas Open began Wednesday, with top seeds slated to start play Friday during the 12-day ATP and WTPA Master 1000 tournament.<\/p>\n
A busy stretch of the tennis season reaches another gear at Indian Wells Tennis Garden, the second-largest outdoor tennis stadium in the world.<\/p>\n
While many consider it the \u201cfifth Grand Slam\u201d because of its elite player field, amenities and equal prize money for men and women, professionals acknowledge the tournament is part of a stressful stretch on the tennis calendar.<\/p>\n
Indian Wells is followed by the Miami Open, another two-week Master 1000 tournament. The tour stops are known as the \u201cSunshine Double.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some players made the short trip from Indian Wells to Las Vegas this past weekend to participate in the MGM Grand Slam, an exhibition designed to help players ramp up for back-to-back tournaments.<\/p>\n
American Reilly Opelka, a 6-foot\u201311 pro, said managing fatigue after a series of tournaments before hitting Indian Wells has altered his practice and play in exhibition matches, including a loss to 19-year-old Brazilian Joao Fonseca in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally in any kind of competition, you get excited and play with a pressure point \u2026 but you don\u2019t feel this when you are practicing,\u201d Opelka said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was trying to feel like this a few days ago while practicing with \u2026 [Tommy Paul,] but instead we got tired and hungry. \u2026 That usually doesn\u2019t happen. We just decided to stop and go to eat somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul said despite the decision to cut practice short, he feels fresh for the upcoming events.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started the year pretty well and for Americans, we are excited for the Sunshine Double,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n
Casper Rudd lost to Opelka during the first round of the Las Vegas exhibition. The Norwegian also lost a week ago during the first round of the Acapulco Open, falling to Chinese qualifier Yibing Wu in straight sets.<\/p>\n
Rudd said he felt \u201cextremely tired\u201d after the Australian Open in January.<\/p>\n
Rancho Palo Verdes resident Taylor Fritz, ranked No. 7 in the world, said the best way to prepare for the grueling tour schedule is \u201cputting [in] the time, work and repetition.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c… Be there, be focused on the quality that you are doing,\u201d said Fritz, a 28-year-old who won the Indian Wells title in 2022.<\/p>\n
While some players are guarding against burnout, others struggled to even reach California. Some players who live in Dubai, including Russians Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev, have to contend with closed airspace triggered by the U.S. and Israel bombing Iran.<\/p>\n
The ATP announced Wednesday that, \u201cthe vast majority of players who were in Dubai have successfully departed today on selected flights.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The early rounds of the BNP Paribas Open began Wednesday, with top seeds slated to start play Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[95443,95445,95446,9734,7770,95442,12411,29871,48,52,51,1421,47,50,49,9442,95447,95444,12967,316,8074],"class_list":["post-206811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-12-day-atp","tag-casper-rudd","tag-early-match","tag-exhibition","tag-factor","tag-fatigue","tag-first-round","tag-indian-wells","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-las-vegas","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-player","tag-sunshine-double","tag-tommy-paul","tag-tournament","tag-wednesday","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}