Tennis court conditions: Why players and weather mean as much as speed and bounce

New York Times

12-03-2025

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — It's an annual ritual. Players descend on the California desert and almost universally declare it an ideal location for a major tennis tournament. The sun, the dry air, the luxe accommodations, the jagged hills and mountains that loom just beyond the Indian Wells Tennis Garden outside Palm Springs.
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Then they take to the purple and green hard courts with the big bounces that usually only happen on red clay. Another collective shout goes up, and it's not so adoring.
'Hey, wait a minute, I thought this was supposed to be a hard court.'
This year, they might have arrived thinking that things were going to be different. Tournament organizers had selected a new company to surface the courts, the same provider that does the U.S. Open and the Miami Open, which follows Indian Wells on the tennis calendar. Finally, this desert enclave was going to play like the faster hard courts that ATP and WTA Tour players have gotten used to in the U.S..
But it's as slow and bouncy as ever.
'Kind of the same court, really slow, bounce a lot,' Carlos Alcaraz said Monday night, after beating the dangerous Denis Shapovalov 6-2, 6-4. 'They said that they changed it, but if nobody told me that I would think it is the same.'
Daniil Medvedev, who two years ago famously threatened to 'pee as slow as this court is' while declaring himself a hard-court expert, showed up last week and said he thought the court was as slow and gritty as ever. 'Very, very slow,' Medvedev, a two-time finalist, said of the courts.
The Russian, who beat Tommy Paul 6-4, 6-0 in the round of 16 Tuesday, said that when he accidentally dropped his racket during practice, the grittiness of the court ripped his grip as it slid across the ground.
In the past, the Indian Wells playing surface was fashioned by Plexipave. This year, Laykold came on board. In both cases, the courts have three layers: Asphalt or concrete on the bottom, a softer acrylic or silicone surface on top of that, and then surface paint that contains varying amounts of sand.
Tommy Haas, the former player who is tournament director at Indian Wells, said organizers listened to the complaints from the players last year and decided it was time at least try to speed up the courts.
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'The outside courts seem to be a little bit quicker than Stadium One and Stadium Two,' Haas said in an interview Tuesday. 'Stadium One seems to be the slowest. So we're trying to adjust, looking at numbers and trying to figure out how to keep all the courts as even as possible. That's what we want for the players.'
In general, the more sand in the paint, the slower the court and the higher the bounce. The physics involved is to do with trajectory and velocity. On clay — and a court like Indian Wells — an incoming ball of equal speed and the same trajectory will retain less speed and bounce more steeply than the same ball would on a faster hard court, or on grass. Topspin, something every player needs in varying degrees, will have more impact on a court with more friction, kicking the ball higher into the air. The sand in the paint at Indian Wells increases friction, which is why there are more balls spitting upward than skidding low.
Add in the dry desert air, which lets a ball fly faster than more humid conditions, and what every player who comes to Indian Wells has to learn to deal with is the contrast between how fast the ball travels when it's airborne and how dramatically it slows down when it hits the ground.
'It's hard to hit a winner and hit through your serves here,' Coco Gauff said after her 7-6(2), 6-2 win over Maria Sakkari Monday.
'Sometimes you hit a good shot and you think it's a great shot and your opponent is there. I think it's testing the patience out here.'
Some players get hot and bothered about surfaces and changes. Some don't mind much at all. There are two mostly unspoken but very important truths about surface discussion in tennis. One is that a surface plays to its weather conditions and, at Indian Wells, it's possible to run the gamut of desert heat to icy windstorm across the course of a day and night.
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The other is that how a tennis court plays is partly beholden to the players playing on it. Someone with a ton of pop on their serve and monstrous groundstrokes who plays at midday in the sun is going to find things fast. Someone who specializes in maneuvering and defense who plays at night in slanting wind is going to find them slow. The beauty of the court is in the eye of the beholder.
Iga Swiatek, who has won here twice and is the defending champion, looks imperious the moment she arrives. She loves slow courts. She loves high bounces. She loves to see her killer forehand fly through the air. Indian Wells allows for all three. So far her title defense has included three matches, two 6-0 bagels and just 42 games in which she is 36-6. She has won 16 of her 21 return games. She likes it out here.
'It gives me a little bit of an advantage,' Swiatek said. 'But on the other hand the conditions are tricky still with the really dry air.'
Alcaraz, who is going for a third title in a row in the men's draw, loves it for the same reasons. So does Stefanos Tsitsipas, on an upswing with his new racket and the feeling of swinging freely with it in hand.
'I've played my entire life with bounces like this,' Tsitsipas said after beating Matteo Berrettini. 'The bounce is unusual for a hard court.'
It's true that Indian Wells bounces higher than most hard courts and it would be a sad tennis tour if all hard courts played as close to the same as is possible when factoring in weather and geography. That said, what every player craves at every tournament is consistency. They want the ball to behave uniformly across the grounds, even if that's not really possible, either.
Novak Djokovic, probably the best hard-court player to ever pick up a racket and a five-time winner in Indian Wells, was not particularly pleased with the conditions after his opening match loss to Botic van de Zandschulp over the weekend. Djokovic struggled to find his rhythm all afternoon against the Dutchman. Shots that looked like they were headed into his strike zone seemed to handcuff him, jumping around his midriff.
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'The difference between the center court and the other courts is immense,' Djokovic said in his news conference. 'The ball is bouncing on the center court higher than some of the highest clay courts.'
At 37, he might never play in this so-called tennis paradise again.
Aryna Sabalenka, the women's world No. 1 who will likely have to get through Swiatek in a final to win here, said she even thought there were 'some questionable parts of the court where the ball doesn't bounce at all or the ball goes really high up.'
'It's just a very minimal amount of of whining at times, trying to find the balance that they would like at the end of the day,' Haas said of the extent of player complaints.
'But again, if you do well at tournaments, you usually quickly forget if the ball bounces a little higher or a little lower, or how fast it goes through the court. At the end of the day, it's all about winning.'
Multiple factors contribute to how fast or slow the tennis ball moves on any particular court. The ball itself. The air temperature and the humidity. Given its desert location, Indian Wells doesn't produce much humidity, but it gets seriously chilly at night, with temperatures often hovering in the low-50s, and that's when things go slower. But on a hot, dry, and mostly still Monday afternoon, things got interesting for Alex de Minaur in his match against Hubert Hurkacz. The latter's kick serve — which players most often hit to their opponent's backhand, trying to get them to hit it above their shoulders — left him with a bad case of the giggles.
De Minaur won 6-4, 6-0 win but said that dealing with Hurkacz's second serve was 'laughable at times. I felt like I needed a step ladder.'
'The surface speed feels exactly the same speed as different years,' De Minaur added. 'What makes for completely different conditions is the weather.'
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No one would have any issues with that. But that also sort of assumes that all the courts play the same, which they don't. Not here, not anywhere, which is the point Djokovic was making. At most tournament sites, the outer courts get far more play than the stadium courts. That smooths them out by comparison and makes them slicker than their show-court counterparts.
Ben Shelton, who plays compatriot Brandon Nakashima in the round of 16, said he arrived in Indian Wells about a week early. He got plenty of practice on the two main stadium courts, and also on the outer courts. He's with Djokovic on this one.
'I think at every hard court tournament the center court is slower, checks up more,' Shelton said Saturday after his win against Mariano Navone of Argentina. 'I feel the same with Rod Laver (Arena, in Melbourne, Australia), I feel the same with Ashe (Arthur Ashe Stadium, N.Y.),' he added, referring to the two main courts at the Australian and U.S. Opens.
Shelton put that knowledge and the favorable climate to work on Monday, during a tight contest with Karen Khachanov of Russia.
When things got close in the second set, Shelton started banging 150mph serves right at Khachanov, who could barely get out of the way. When Khachanov focused on avoiding that serve, Shelton started kicking balls out wide.
'I get the most out of those serves here because it is so hard to bring the ball down into the court,' he said.
There is another approach to all this, the one favored by world No. 11 Tommy Paul. 'I'm the worst guy to ask about this stuff,' he said. 'I don't even think about it. I just go out there and play.'
He's still alive, too.