Indian Wells is one of the most prestigious tournaments on the tennis calendar outside the four Grand Slams, but an event that the Williams sisters boycotted for a number of years.
It is often called the ‘fifth Grand Slam’ due to the large crowd it attracts and hosts the second largest tennis stadium in the world, behind Flushing Meadows’ Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York.
It has not been a happy tournament for everyone as Venus and Serena Williams boycotted the event following a truly shocking incident in 2001.
Serena won the title that year as a 19-year-old, beating Kim Clijsters in the final but she was booed throughout the match and racially abused, along with her sister Venus and father Richard.
The Williams sisters were due to play each other in the semi-final but Venus withdrew from the match 20 minutes beforehand, citing a knee injury, and this angered the crowd.
This only fuelled suggestions that Richard decided in advance which sister would win their matches against each other.
The vitriolic abuse directed to the Williams family was horrendous and they vowed never to return to Indian Wells.
Writing in her 2009 autobiography, On the Line, Serena said: “What got me most of all was that it wasn’t just a scattered bunch of boos. It wasn’t coming from just one section.
“It was like the whole crowd got together and decided to boo all at once. The ugliness was just raining down on me, hard.
“I didn’t know what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. What was most surprising about this uproar was the fact that tennis fans are typically a well-mannered bunch.
“They’re respectful. They sit still. And in Palm Springs, especially, they tended to be pretty well-heeled, too.
“But I looked up and all I could see was a sea of rich people – mostly older, mostly white – standing and booing lustily, like some kind of genteel lynch mob.
