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Indian Wells, California – For a tournament that bills itself as a tennis paradise, Indian Wells has a tendency to bring some Old Testament elements to the sport in the California desert. The sun that blazes down in the day is replaced with temperatures that can turn frigid at night. In a part of the world that sees rain around 14 days out of 365, a few always seem to land in the first fortnight of March, interrupting play. Last year, bees swarmed the main stadium. This year, the wind is puppeting the small yellow ball they try to hit inside the white lines and driving them to distraction.
The wind is the most capricious. Much like a powerful first serve or groundstroke, its power over tennis means little without knowing its direction. If it’s blowing up and down a court, parallel with the sidelines, the effects are more predictable. At one end, players have to be wary of overhitting with the breeze at their back. At the other, they have to be mindful of how much it will hold up their shots.
The breeze can howl off Flushing Bay some days at the U.S. Open in New York; Arthur Ashe Stadium, the main arena, was known for its vortexes before the installation of a partial roof in 2015. At the ATP Tour event held in Estoril, Portugal, just north of Lisbon, the wind off the Atlantic could make a mess of matches.
The winds in Indian Wells are of another sort, something that somehow slips most players’ minds as they wax poetic about what is for many their favorite stop on the tennis calendar. The place is basically a wind machine thanks to its location between two sets of mountains, the San Jacintos and the San Bernardinos, in the Coachella Valley about 120 miles east of Los Angeles.
Rinky Hijikata said Thursday’s wind wasn’t just powerful: it seemed to be coming from every direction. Given that, there was only one way to survive, and it didn’t involve taking dead aim at the lines to try to end points quickly.
Belinda Bencic, who followed her usual strategy as she prevailed 6-1, 6-1 over Tatjana Maria, had a similar approach. “Trying to play with it, not trying to go for risky shots and just kind of playing a big target and working your legs hard.
Respect the wind,” she warned.
The wind made for a troublesome first match for Joao Fonseca, the 18-year-old rising star from Brazil who is playing the tournament for the first time. Fonseca had to scramble back from break down in the third set against Jacob Fearnley of Britain to win his Indian Wells debut.
Emma Raducanu, who was playing her first match since a spectator was removed from one of her matches for exhibiting fixated behavior toward her in Dubai last month, found the windy conditions challenging. However, the wind, and the tricky challenges of Miju Uchijima, who mastered the conditions by varying her shots, proved too much in her 6-3, 6-2 defeat.
As night fell and the temperature dropped, the wind died down. Of course, then the rain came, a cold steady drizzle that caused play to stop around 8:30 p.m. At 9:25 p.m., officials called off play for the night.
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