The Indian Wells Masters (now sponsored by BNP Paribas and officially called the BNP Paribas Open) is an annual tennis tournament held in Indian Wells, California, United States.

The tournament is a Masters 1000 event on the men's tour and is a Premier Mandatory event on the women's tour having as main sponsor the French bank BNP Paribas. Between 1974 and 1990 it was a major tournament of the Grand Prix Tennis Tour and part of the Grand Prix Championship Series. The event, held in March, is one of two tour events (besides the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Florida) in which main draw play extends beyond eight days. The women's main draw usually starts on Wednesday and the men's main draw starts on Thursday. Both finals are held on Sunday of the following week. Both singles main draws include 96 players in a 128-player grid, with the 32 seeded players getting a bye to the second round.

The tournament is played on hard courts and is the best attended tennis tournament outside the four Grand Slam tournaments, with over 300,000 visitors during the event. It has the second largest tennis stadium in the world.

Coordinates: 51°12′26″N 2°39′07″W / 51.2073°N 2.6519°W / 51.2073; -2.6519

Wells is a cathedral city and civil parish in the Mendip district of Somerset, England, on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills. Although the population recorded in the 2001 census is 10,406, it has had city status since 1205. It is the second smallest English city in terms of area and population after the City of London although, unlike the latter, Wells is not part of a larger metropolitan conurbation, and is consequently described in some sources as being England's smallest city.

The name Wells derives from the three wells dedicated to Saint Andrew, one in the market place and two within the grounds of the Bishop's Palace and cathedral. There was a small Roman settlement around the wells, but its importance grew under the Saxons when King Ine of Wessex founded a minster church in 704, around which the settlement grew. Wells became a trading centre and involved in cloth making before its involvement in both the English Civil War and the Monmouth Rebellion during the 17th century. In the 19th century, transport infrastructure improved with stations on three different railway lines.

Roger Federer (German pronunciation: [ˈfeːdəʁɐ]) (born 8 August 1981) is a Swiss professional tennis player who held the ATP No. 1 position for a record 237 consecutive weeks from 2 February 2004 to 18 August 2008. Federer has occupied the #1 ranking for 285 overall weeks, one week short of the record 286 weeks held by Pete Sampras. As of 28 May 2012, he is ranked World No. 3. Federer has won a men's record 16 Grand Slam singles titles. He is one of seven male players to capture the career Grand Slam and one of three (with Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal) to do so on three different surfaces (clay, grass, and hard courts). He is the only male player in tennis history to have reached the title match of each Grand Slam tournament at least five times and also the final at each of the nine ATP Masters 1000 Tournaments. Many sports analysts, tennis critics, and former and current players consider Federer to be the greatest tennis player of all time.

Federer has appeared in an unprecedented 23 career Grand Slam tournament finals, including a men's record ten in a row, and appeared in 18 of 19 finals from the 2005 Wimbledon Championships through the 2010 Australian Open, the lone exception being the 2008 Australian Open. He holds the record of reaching the semifinals or better of 23 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments over five and a half years, from the 2004 Wimbledon Championships through the 2010 Australian Open. At the 2012 Australian Open, he reached a record 31st consecutive Grand Slam quarterfinal. During the course of his run at the 2012 French Open in Roland Garros, Federer eclipsed Jimmy Connors long standing record of 233 match wins in Grand Slam tournaments when he defeated Adrian Ungur in a second round match.

Rafael "Rafa" Nadal Parera (Catalan: [rəˈfɛɫ nəˈðaɫ pəˈɾeɾə]; Spanish: [rafaˈel naˈðal paˈɾeɾa]) (born 3 June 1986) is a Spanish professional tennis player and a former World No. 1. As of 28 May 2012 (2012 -05-28)^[update], he is ranked No. 2 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time; his success on clay has earned him the nickname "The King of Clay", and has prompted many experts to regard him as the greatest clay court player of all time.

Nadal has won ten Grand Slam singles titles, including a record six French Open titles (tied with Bjorn Borg), the 2008 Olympic gold medal in singles, a record 21 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournaments, and also was part of the Spain Davis Cup team that won the finals in 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2011. He completed the Career Grand Slam by winning the 2010 US Open, being the seventh player in history, and the youngest in the open era, to achieve it. He is the second male player to complete the Career Golden Slam (winner of the four grand slams and the Olympic Gold medal) after only Andre Agassi.

Juan Martín del Potro (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxwan marˈtin del ˈpotɾo]) (born 23 September 1988) is an Argentine professional tennis player. As of 14 May 2012, he is ranked no. 9 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). Del Potro achieved a top-10 ranking by the ATP for the first time on October 6, 2008. In January 2010, he reached a career-high ranking of world no. 4. Soon after attaining this ranking, however, Del Potro had to withdraw from most of the tournaments in 2010 due to a wrist injury, and his ranking plummeted.

Having started playing tennis at the age of seven, Del Potro won his first senior match in 2004 at the age of 15. Del Potro became the youngest player to finish in the Top 100 in 2006, the youngest player in the top 50 in 2007, and youngest player in the top 10 in 2008. In 2008, he became the first player in ATP history to win his first four career titles in as many tournaments. He also completed the second-longest winning streak in 2008, and the second longest by a teenager in the Open Era, behind Rafael Nadal—with his winning sequence spanning 23 matches over five tournaments. Del Potro captured his first Grand Slam title at the 2009 US Open, defeating Nadal in the semifinal, and Roger Federer in the final, becoming the first man to beat both Federer and Nadal in the same Grand Slam tournament (later achieved by Novak Djokovic at the 2011 US Open). He became the second Argentine and the fifth-youngest man to win the US Open title in the Open Era. At 1.98m (6 ft, 6 in), he is the tallest player to have ever won a Grand Slam.