Currently ongoing is the Indian Wells tennis tournament in Indian Wells California. This is one of the biggest tournaments of the year and is classified as an ATP Masters 1000 tournament. This classification is only given to the most prestigious and most valued tournaments in tennis. Only nine other tournaments share this classification including Monte Carlo in France, Madrid in Spain and Miami, which is also in the United States. The Los Angeles Times called it “the fifth Grand Slam” and the Indian Wells Tennis Garden is the second largest permanent tennis stadium in the world only behind Arthur Ashe stadium at the U.S. Open. The tournament draws the best players in the world in tennis including Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Alexander Zeverev and many others. The tournament begins on the 4th of March and ends on March 15th. The prize pool for the tournament for the men is $9,415,725 and the prize pool for the women is $8,963,700. Some highlight players of the tournament for the women include Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Elena Ryabinka, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula. The tournament is played on “hard courts” differing from many european tournaments that play on clay courts and from some that play on grass courts. Hard court tournaments are usually more of a wild card compared to other tournaments due to inexperience with court surface and other factors such as wear and tear and different forms of play being favored more than others. Shocking finishes in hard court tournaments include Jakub Mensik beating Novak Djokovic in last year’s Miami Open, the many shocking U.S. open winners including Juan Martin del Potro defeating prime and 5 time consecutive winner Roger Federer in 2009, Martin Cilic winning in a 2014 U.S. Open finals match including none of the Big 3 tennis players of the 2010s, and Stan Wawrinka defeating Novak Djokovic in 2016’s final. Some of the shocking defeats of this year’s Indian Wells have been Arthur Fils defeating 9th ranked Felix Auger-Aliassime, qualifier Rinky Hijikata beating 10th ranked Alexander Bublik, 27th ranked Christian Norrie defeating 7th ranked Alex de Minaur, Learner Tien defeating 8th ranked Ben Shelton and many more. This tournament is one of the most exciting non-grand slam tournaments and I believe that more people will enjoy this tournament than they originally thought. Shocking finishes and exciting finishes will surely entertain and highlight the sport of tennis.