With the early exits of Kim Clijsters, Justine Henin, Maria Sharapova and Svetlana Kuznetsova, Indian Wells lost all of its former Grand Slam champions prior to the fourth round.
U.S. Open champion Clijsters, who let go of a 4-0 lead in the third-set tiebreaker against Alisa Kleybanova, said that it’s not going to be easy for the star veterans to win week after week as the level of play has increased overall.
“A lot of people expect the top players to do well, but you see it more and more that in the early rounds it just becomes a lot tougher. In a way, you want to see those big names playing. But I think there's a lot of younger girls who are coming up and make it really tough for us," said Clijsters. "When you're not playing your absolute best, I think anybody is out there to beat us. I remember in the past when I used to go to Grand Slams, and I think my first two, three rounds were always kind of easy. Now it's definitely not the case. I think it's good for the sport.”
Fourth seed Elena Dementieva doesn’t see it as a trend and believes that Clijsters, Henin and Sharapova will continue to challenge for the top.
“There will always will be an expectation for those kind of players. But I think this week they just faced a very good opponent in the early rounds,” said the fourth-seeded Russian, who is into the quarterfinals after a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Aravane Rezai. “It looks like they're in great shape so I'm sure they do well next week in Miami. I think they're pretty consistent, Justine and Kim. For sure it's not easy to coming back after two years. But the way they started to play their first tournament was very impressive. And just one tournament here doesn't make a big difference for them.”—Matthew Cronin