By November in the Coachella Valley is sunny and hot. For the first four days of round-robin action at the WTA Finals, Indian Wells, Calif., has had seemingly perfect conditions for the flagship event in women’s tennis.
So far, it hasn’t quite gone that way. Aryna Sabalenka, the reigning champion at the BNP Paribas Open, held at the same venue in March, has been forced to serve blind. Home hope Jessica Pegula has also struggled to see the ball while serving; Wimbledon champion Linda Nosková has had to move farther behind the baseline to return.
Across the board, the round-robin matches have brought more errors, shanks and uneven sets than would be expected from the best eight players of 2026. And all of them have said that the bright, beautiful sun, a familiar foe for recreational tennis players, is causing more problems than the perfect weather might suggest, along with the desert air making the Wilson balls — different to the Dunlops used at the BNP Paribas Open — harder to control.
Whether live or on broadcast, the sun can bother players and fans alike. Shadows slanting across some stadiums, especially those not purpose-built for tennis, can make shots hard to track for players and matches unwatchable for spectators. But on Indian Wells Stadium 2, it’s not the venue, but the unfamiliar time of year, that is causing problems.
Eight months separate the WTA’s visits to Indian Wells in March and November. The midday sun now sits approximately 15 degrees lower in the sky, casting longer shadows and directing sunlight across the stadium at different angles.
“Sometimes I had to adjust my toss, sometimes I had to serve blind,” Sabalenka said during an interview with Sky Sports after beating Karolína Muchová 7-6(2), 7-5 in her opening round-robin match Monday. She said the changing sunlight and shade had complicated her serving, and she hit seven double faults — so far in the tournament, only Nosková and Mirra Andreeva have managed to put together a match with more aces than double faults.
Pegula, who lost to Coco Gauff in three sets Sunday, then defeated Marta Kostyuk in straight sets Tuesday, said the sunlight had caught her by surprise at a venue she visits every spring.
“I’ve learned that the sun is in a different position, and that is definitely true because all of a sudden the sun is always in my face, and I’m like, ‘Wait, I don’t remember this from earlier in the year,'” she said in a mixed zone interview. “I guess we looked it up, it is actually a thing.”
The players aren’t in agreement about when it is best to play. The first singles match of each day, which starts at noon local time, sees the shadow from the sun edge across the court from one end to the other as it plays out. Pegula played second against Gauff and first against Kostyuk; she said she preferred the higher midday position of the sun for serving, but playing the first slot means playing through changing shadow positions on the court, which makes tracking the ball in rallies harder.
At Indian Wells’ latitude, the sun reaches approximately 54 degrees above the horizon at solar noon in mid-March. On Tuesday, its maximum elevation was about 39 degrees, according to calculations using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s solar-position equations. The difference is caused by the Earth’s axial tilt, which changes the sun’s apparent path throughout the year.
At solar noon, shadows at Indian Wells are nearly 70 percent longer in November than in mid-March. A vertical object one meter tall casts a shadow of approximately 123 centimetres in November, compared with 73 centimetres in March. Inside a stadium, the height and position of the stands determine where those shadows fall and whether the sun appears in a player’s eyeline. Tinted glass panels dotted around the stadium work as anti-glare measures for spectators.
Zöe Wimshurst, a visual performance coach who has worked with Olympic athletes, said during an interview that the eyes have physical limitations when responding to intense light.
“You can’t just get used to that,” Wimshurst said. “You can’t suddenly make your pupil constrict further.”
The fluorescent yellow colour of tennis balls helps them stand out against the court, but extreme brightness can reduce their visibility. A player serving into the sunlight may struggle to distinguish the ball against the sky, while a shot travelling between sunlit and shaded sections of the court presents changing levels of contrast.
For the server, the problem can be twofold. They have to look in the sun while serving. Then, when they are waiting for the next ball and trying to track it, they are already dazzled.
Nosková, one of the most formidable servers in women’s tennis, addressed the problem on return more than on serve during her match against Gauff Tuesday. She adjusted her positioning on return, moving further behind the baseline to give herself more time to judge the ball. The Wimbledon champion won 6-3, 6-3 in 75 minutes to become the first player to qualify for the singles semifinals, breaking Gauff five times and winning 18 of 24 points played on the American’s second serve.
“It’s not easy to hit a first serve and then get a fast return right back because of the sun,” Nosková said during an interview with Tennis Channel afterward. She said visibility had been difficult for both players and that moving back had helped her returning.
Matt Miller-Dicks, an associate professor specialising in skill acquisition and visual perception, said that experienced tennis players do not need to follow the ball continuously with their eyes. Instead, they use information from an opponent’s movements and the early stages of a shot to anticipate its trajectory.
“Rather than having to track the ball all the way during the action, skilled players are really good at predicting or anticipating the trajectory of the ball,” he said during an interview.
That process involves rapid eye movements, known as saccades, which allow players to direct their gaze towards where they expect the ball to travel. Miller-Dicks said direct glare can interfere with those visual strategies, changing how players gather the information needed to time their shots.
Although players cannot train their pupils to constrict beyond their physical limits, they can adjust their anticipation and court positioning. Moving back gives a returner longer to judge the ball’s flight, but also leaves them farther from the baseline when attempting to take control of a rally. Servers can adjust their toss to keep it out of the sun’s direct glare, but that can make their serve easier to read or throw them off their natural rhythm.
Pegula faces Nosková in Thursday’s second singles match, with a semifinal place still at stake for the American, in the second match. If the first goes long enough, the sun will be less of a character in the match. But if it starts quick, both players will find themselves with a second, formidable opponent on the court.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
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