Tommy Haas explains Indian Wells’ surface shift: "The feedback has been great'

Tommy Haas, Indian Wells director, referred to the surface change at Indian Wells after 25 years. The tournament organizers decided to move away from the slow Plexipave surface to align speed criteria with their neighbors on the calendar and avoid common player complaints about the bounce and speed differences of the courts, as well as complaints about the balls.

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The courts constructed with Plexipave, a company originating in New Zealand, create an acrylic surface that has been used at the Australian Open since 2008. At Indian Wells, the Plexipave IW - ITF Category 1 surface, which was slow-paced, provided characteristics of a more paused surface, compensating for climatic and altitude effects, or simply slowing down the pace to a level just above that of clay courts.

On the other hand, the construction or finishing of the courts using the Laykold formula brings a new dimension of speed to the tournament. Perhaps this is the reason for the change or the influence of this US-based company from Pennsylvania.

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Regarding this, Tommy Haas commented that the intention is to make the courts more uniform across different tournaments in the US season. According to the German, so far he has received positive feedback from players. "I’ve been asking players a little bit, we wanna make sure it gets as close to the tournaments that it follows well, like Miami.

“They use a late courts and we have a lot of complaints all over the year about the high bounces, the courts are too gritty, too slow, can we put a little more sand into it.

“But overall the feedback has been great, I think it’s very similar to what it has been over the years, but we will see,” he added. “I think it’s a little bit faster, I tried to play too myself a little bit. It’s gonna be a little bit faster, I think it would slow down a little bit, or get faster a little bit, we don’t know yet, depending on how many matches are gonna be played on this court.”

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However, several players have commented that they didn’t notice any difference in the surface, such as Alexander Zverev, who said: "There is a new surface? Feels the same to me, to be honest. I practiced here for four days, I didn't notice it. Didn't know anything about it," Alexander Zverev said.

On the other hand, 2-time champion Iga Swiatek agreed with the German: "Honestly, I don't feel much difference. We come here after a year anyway, after a year of playing on different surfaces. Everybody says it's a bit different, but I don't know if -- it's actually in the back of our heads because everybody is talking about it," Swiatek said.

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