Indian Wells Quallies

Indian Wells is a strange tournament. The main draw is 96 players, which is more than any other tour event, except for the grand slams. One of the consequences of this unusual draw size is that the qualifying tournament is also pretty strange. There are 12 qualifying spots, 48 players in contention, and 24 of them are seeded. The top seed is Uzbek player Denis Istomin, while the 24th seed is American Jesse Witten. Here are my thoughts on the draw.

Istomin will have to beat two Americans to get into the main draw, and I think he'll be able to. Unless either Bobby Reynolds or Michael Yani have huge fanbases in California who are willing to help their main through a tough match in the quallies, I see the Uzbek through.

The second seed, Illya Marchenko of Ukraine, has a tougher road. He could face Donald Young in the deciding match for entry into the main draw. The "Donald" has had a pretty good year so far, and this is one of his last chances to make a splash - particularly on home soil - for a while. If he doesn't make noise here or in Miami, you can probably say goodbye to him until July.

Dustin Brown of Jamaica might face Gaston Gaudio for a spot in the tournament, which I would give to Brown on this surface. Gaudio's comeback has not been anything to write home about, thus far. But then again, I could just be hopeful, because I still want to watch Dustin Brown play a whole match.

Carsten Ball is making it through qualifying, no doubt. Somdev Devvarman has a chance, but he has a tougher road, which runs through veteran Stefan Koubek. Another veteran in the draw, Rainer Schuettler, should probably make it through.

One of the matches that I think could be interesting is the likely second round between Jesse Witten and Yen-Hsun Lu. We haven't heard much from Jesse since his close loss to Djokovic at the U.S. Open last year. Ryan Anderson is another player who hasn't done much lately, but these are his favorite courts and conditions.

There are some interesting players here, but I think that qualifying presents such a strange environment which is so different than the main draw of the tournament that almost any result can happen and not be a huge upset. We'll then have to see where these players land in the main draw, which I'll take a look at tomorrow.