Its great to see so much following for a relatively lesser known tournament. I was fortunate enough to be at the stadium along with my wife, cheering Leander Paes and Thomas Damm. So I thought I'd give my first hand experience to all those who might be interested. For the record, official score was 6-2,6-7(7-5),12-10. Prize money is $5mn plus. The women's semi-final in the main stadium went on for more than 2 hours and hence they had to move the Paes-Damm men's doubles semi-final to a smaller court in Stadium 3. It was scorching hot at Indian Wells with temperatures soaring to 100F.
Paes-Damm took the first set easily helped by the unforced errors of their top-seeded opponents. Second set was tougher and the score went to 6 games each. Paes-Damm should have won 7-2 but with their mistakes lost the tie-breaker 7-5. There was no third set but another tie-break for 10 points. So the third 'set' was won 11-9 by Paes-Damm.
I was surprised that an ATP tournament had such rules where a proper third set was replaced by a 10 point tie-break - that too at the semi-final level. Anyway the best part was to see Leander win. We cheered him all along (having taken pictures with him during his practice session). Surprisingly lot of Americans also supported Paes-Damm - thoroughly enjoying the trademark chest bumps (yes.. he continues doing it even after his break-up with Bhupathi).
Overall we had great fun. Wish we had more sports heroes from Mera Bharat Mahaan !!
