The billionaire tennis amateur who has reconverted Indian Wells and moved the Miami Open

Eccentric, controversial, influential, visionary, humble past, but now one of the 10 largest fortunes in the world, he became the man who saved and took the top places in the world of tennis at Masters 1000 of Indian Wells, a tournament that was beginning to see its collapse, in a sunset that almost ends up ArgentinaLarry Ellison enlarged his size, dressed him with glamor and gave him details on the category that managed to pbad from the podium to the Miami Open, the 1000 Masters of the East Coast, which was forced to a millionaire investment to adapt to the new models imposed by Southern California.

The present of Indian Wells is related to the eccentricities of a millionaire who is a character in its own right. But none of what we see in the tournament today refers to the past, the competition, or Larry. Son of Florence Spellman, a single mother of 19 years old and a father of whom we only know that he is a military, Lawrence Joseph Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of 9 months and his mother decided to give it to his sister for adoption and disappear for 48 years.. That's how his aunt Lillian Spellman next to his parco and his austere husband Louis Ellison, who would give him his family name, was responsible for the education and health of the baby boy in New York.

A series of moves took him from the Big Apple to a two-room apartment in Chicago, then to Illinois and finally to California (1966), after the death of his adoptive mother. He has tried several university courses, but has never completed even three years of any of them..

Although he grew up in a Jewish family, Larry refused his bar mitzvah at the age of 13 and continues to claim that "the particular dogmas of Judaism are not dogmas to which I because I do not believe them real, but these are interesting stories, the only thing that connects me to Israel is their innovative spirit in technology. "

This love of technology has led him to work in different software companies until he develops a custom product for the CIA, which he christened Oracle, and decides to create his own business with his two bosses. With only $ 1,400, they founded in 1977 Software Development Laboratories (SDL), which, a few years later and after several intermediate baptisms, will take the definitive name of its flagship product, the Oracle database.

With Ellison at the helm, the company experienced steady growth, except in 1990, when it had to overcome a crisis for which it fired 400 of its employees.

Founder of Silicon Valley, in his struggle for commercial positioning and his friendship with Steve Jobs came to have Bill Gates as one of his enemies. In addition to Microsoft, Ellison was put on the sidewalk in front of IBM, Unix, Sybase and Informix. He continued at the head of his Oracle entering the new century and his fortune began to increase almost geometrically. In 2015, he left his position after 37 years at the helm of the company. at the end of 2018, Forbes was calculating his fortune at $ 56 billion, the tenth of the planet.

Married and divorced four times, the official photographer of his last marriage was his friend Steve Jobs. He never had too much inconvenience when breaking his marriage. Indeed, his second wife, Nancy Wheeler Jenkins, only accepted $ 500 for the separation.

After the separation of his last wife, the 74-year-old novelist Melanie Craft usually appears in the company of Ukrainian model Nikita Kahn.

Despite this, those who know him a little closer suggest Do not expect disinterested gestures or anything that is not meant to satiate one aspect of your personality or your desire, philanthropy is not your strong point. As a result, they argue, commercial transactions and Ellison's purchases can not be expected for commercial purposes. Possessions seem their weakness. Manors, cars, fighter and training planes, boats, yachts and even one of Hawaii's largest islands are some of the properties that are piling up among your belongings. In which also includes the Masters 1000 of Indian Wells, a tournament that former owners Charlie Pbadarell and Raymond Moore moved to the arid and windy region in 1999, in what is known as the Mojave Desert.

Sports and investments played their part together and it was tennis that ended up carving the rock to turn it into stands and the one that planted the green to allow grbad and palm trees to sprout in places where the dust and the stone did not give birth to new shoots of life.

Many doubted the success of the project, but this event was championed Juan Martín Del Potro last season, with an investment of $ 77 million, they managed to adapt it to the California Desert Protection (1994), which preserves the Joshua Tree Park (which gave its name to the U2 album ) and the Colorado Canyon Rocky Mountains. on an indomitable territory of 356,000 square meters extension, the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

Located about two hours drive, southeast of Los Angeles and a few miles from Palm Springs, extends the Coachella Valley. Desert climate, with temperatures that can reach 50 ° C in summer, but that goes down at night to mark 6 or 7 ° C in the environmental thermometer.

The complex has painted arid green and has given more rotation to people with an attractive high-level sport program. What was once dust and stone, in the first year of the 21st century, had been transformed into a center of

attraction But the pbadage of time, the economic needs, the demands of the players and globalization undermined the possibilities of this tournament and began to lose their prestige and their value.

In 2005, the life insurance company Pacific Life, the main sponsor of the event, suffered disadvantages that made it tarnish. The rumor of sales led to receiving offers from different groups who tried to get him to come not only from the place, but also from the United States. China and Japan were two places mentioned at the time, but were built on the success of the Argentine Legion in the professional circuit. It was possible to badess if Argentina could become the new headquarters of the Masters series. And Roca Park received a new inspection.

The tournament was in free fall due to lack of investment and sponsor support and had to fail. In addition, the Miami Open pushed him more and more into the abyss, but a group of investors including Pete Sampras himself came to help him and managed to overcome this situation in 2006. Two years later , the last The multimillionaire tennis lover took his ticket and sat in one of the stadium halls, with a capacity of 10,000 spectators, to watch the finals.

The tycoon left with the certainty that he was the first to resurface a tournament fallen into the popularity of tennis players. In December 2009, the founding partner and CEO of Oracle Corporation signed the purchase not only of the tournament, but also of the entire Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

Larry had to rebuild it since the decline of the contest and has therefore stopped investing since it was acquired. In 2014, he abandoned four stadium 2 stadium stands, for 3,000 people, and built it permanently, but almost three times more than his previous capacity, for an amount of $ 11 million, and then allocated another 127 to the transformation and enlargement. at stage 1 out of 6 thousand additional seats. In this way, He won the hearts of the players, who found the answers to requests for comfort during a tournament.

Indian Wells, as he is known in the circuit, has acquired a greater hierarchy, with a public space that is distinguished by the cleanliness and the details of the category, which speak of the level of people who come to see the monsters of tennis. If you even have smart toilets in the VIP areas, in areas near the suites that companies have in the first level of Stadium 1, overlooking the field, you can enjoy the game from the living room or from the living room. the public There, things are not old, in any case there will be antiques.

Currently, the property is considered versatile and It has two permanent stadiums with a capacity of 16,000 and 8,000 spectators respectively and 29 tennis courts, including 23 with artificial lighting. In this document, various activities are organized for members and the community, as well as exhibitions in his outdoor stadium, such as the NBA or recitals such as The Who, Tom Petty or Andrea Bocelli, among others.

In the desert area where a rain gauge is as useless as the ashtray of a motorcycle, the rocks, the wind and the thermal difference were finally mastered by the extravagance of an eccentric tennis enthusiast millionaire.