The heart of the tennis season traditionally kicks off at the BNP Paribas Open. From now through the end of Wimbledon in July, there’s hardly time to take a breath as the players travel across two continents and three surfaces. But that opening-day vibe is stronger than ever this year, because Indian Wells also marks the official 2018 WTA debut of (an unseeded) Serena Williams. For the first time since Serena left the tour more than a year ago, the women will have a fully loaded field at a top-tier event.
Now that the first big question is out of the way—where did Serena land in the draw?—let’s take a look at how the next two weeks might go. Serena isn’t the only Grand Slam champ who is unseeded and looming in the desert.
VIEW THE COMPLETE WTA DRAW
Serena is the A1 story, and Caroline Wozniacki won the season’s first Grand Slam, but Simona Halep is the top seed. Going by recent history, that makes sense: Halep won this tournament in 2015, and she’s typically at her best on U.S. hard courts. She’s also 14-1 in 2017, she’s coming off a gritty run to the Australian Open final, and her draw looks manageable. Jelena Ostapenko, the woman who beat her in the French Open final, is the second seed in this section, followed by Johanna Konta and Kiki Mladenovic. The first seed that Halep could face is 30th-ranked Dominika Cibulkova.
Returning: Svetlana Kuznetsova, Belinda Bencic
New face: Aryna Sabalenka. She’s 19, she’s from Belarus, and the volume of her grunt is matched only by the power in her strokes. Remind you of anyone? Maybe another woman who has played well in Indian Wells in the past? Sabalenka starts against Varvara Lepchenko and could face Kuznetsova after that.
Semifinalist: Halep