A double dose of former world No. 1 players will be injected into the Indian Wells draw.
Grand Slam champions Andy Murray and Kim Clijsters have received wild cards into the BNP Paribas Open main draw.
More: What Makes Indian Wells in October Different?
The BNP Paribas Open, a combined ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 event to be held October 4 – 17, 2021 at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Eight Americans were also among those awarded wild cards into the event.
Former World No. 1, four-time Grand Slam singles champion and two-time BNP Paribas Open champion Clijsters will continue her career comeback at the first-ever fall edition of Tennis Paradise.
Clijsters, who announced her return to professional tennis in late 2019 after a seven-year hiatus from the Tour, will be returning to the desert – where she is a two-time champion (2003, 2005) – for the first time since 2011. A member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Clijsters has spent 19 weeks as the No. 1 player in the world.
Murray, a three-time Grand Slam singles champion and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, will return to Tennis Paradise for the first time since the 2017 tournament.
The British superstar will look to improve upon his best career finish in Indian Wells in 2015, when he advanced to the semifinals. Throughout his illustrious career, Murray has spent 41 weeks ranked as the World No. 1.
Murray will be joined on the men’s side of the draw by a trio of Americans: 2017 BNP Paribas Open semifinalist and two-time tournament doubles champion Jack Sock; 20-year-old rising star Jenson Brooksby; and Southern California native Zach Svajda. Sock, who has been ranked as high as World No. 8 and World No. 2 in singles and doubles respectively, will look to continue an impressive rebound during the 2021 season.
Brooksby will be making his first-ever BNP Paribas Open appearance after reaching the Round of 16 earlier this summer at the US Open. Svajda, who is just 18 years old, will look to make a strong showing in front of a hometown crowd in his first career appearance at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.
Eighteen-year-old Denmark native Holger Rune will also make his desert debut as a main draw wild card. Rune has impressed throughout the summer, winning back-to-back ATP Challenger titles at San Marino and Verona before advancing through three rounds of qualifying at the 2021 US Open.
On the women’s side, 18-year-old American and four-time WTA doubles titlist Cati McNally will head to the desert as a main draw wild card, as will Americans Claire Liu, Katie Volynets, Katrina Scott and 2020 Orange Bowl Junior champion Ashlyn Krueger. 18-year-old Elsa Jacquemot of France received the final women’s main draw wild card.
2021 US Open Champion Emma Raducanu was previously awarded a main draw wild card.
Qualifying wild cards into the 2021 BNP Paribas Open on both the men’s and women’s sides will be announced in the coming days.
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