Sports
Tennis bends to the wind’s will at Indian Wells as desert weather blows players off course
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — 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 sworn enemy of tennis players at all levels — that rarely stops play, but defines its rhythm more than any other weather condition — is puppeting the small yellow ball they try to hit inside the white lines and driving them to distraction.
“Bloody windy out there,” said Rinky Hijikata, the 24-year-old Australian who credited his childhood in a windy suburb of Sydney for getting through his first-round match with Alexander Shevchenko of Kazakhstan, 6-1, 6-3. Across the complex, 40mph gusts buffeted palm trees, sending serve tosses askew and wobbling balls through the air like a swerving soccer free kick.
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.
“You got to give yourself big margins,” he said. “You’ve got to hit the ball in the court and get your running shoes on.”
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.
Heat can be exhausting and rain can delay play, but 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 player receiving a ball with wind behind it needs to react quicker; if it’s slowing a ball down, their footwork needs to take them to it and adjust to any sudden changes of direction.
It doesn’t usually work that cleanly. 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. The mountains act like a funnel; the hot air from the desert ground rises, and the cool air from above rushes in to take its place. On the outside courts, it will go in whatever direction it has chosen for the day. On the main arena, Stadium 1, the bowl structure and its doors and openings create currents and vortexes to which players have to adapt on the fly.
You can literally see the wind just take the ball over mid-air pic.twitter.com/0uMjtaVD8K
— Owen (@kostekcanu) March 6, 2025
A desert wind can create other hazards as well. Bencic said she left the practice court last Friday with a mouthful of the desert’s finest.
“It was like a sandstorm,” she said.
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 Britain to win his Indian Wells debut.
Fonseca dominated Fearnley in the first set, as the Briton adjusted to the wind and figured out how to play aggressively in it. Fearnley might have expected to have an advantage. He played college tennis at Texas Christian University, which can be plenty gusty in its own right, especially at the T.C.U. home courts, which are built into a kind of bowl.
“A lot of it is mental,” Fearnley said. “You can’t really control what the weather is going to do, so you kind of just accept it and try and use it to the best of your ability.”
He seemed to have it mastered things, outhitting the Brazilian until a double fault allowed Fonseca to draw even in the deciding set. Fonseca didn’t lose another game in the windiest match he could remember, in which his kick serve, jumping out of the ad-court and into Fearnley’s backhand, shackled his opponent. His hat blew off at one point; a towel rolled onto the court and interrupted play during another.
Players battling the wind as well as each other 🤝
The Towel had enough of this point 😆#Tennisparadise pic.twitter.com/Rp6ElRk4Oz
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 6, 2025
“When it’s windy, it’s just a little mistake, and at this level it’s just one point that you won the match,” he said.
Still, the wind made Fonseca so uncomfortable that after the two-hour match he headed for the practice courts to hit for another half-hour and try to gain a feel for the ball.
After Fonseca and Fearnley finished in the main stadium, it was Emma Raducanu’s turn to try to figure out the elements. Raducanu 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. The person who appeared at her second-round match against Karolina Muchová had “approached her, left her a note, took her photograph, and engaged in behaviour that caused her distress,” according to a statement from Dubai authorities.
Indian Wells brought safety and plenty of support for her. “I didn’t have what happened in Dubai in my head at all today,” she said.
Unfortunately for Raducanu, who thrives on rhythm and finding her groove, it also brought the kind of conditions that no player would want for a first match after a break. The wind, and the tricky challenges of Moyuka Uchijima, who mastered the conditions by varying her shots, proved too much in a 6-3, 6-2 defeat.
Like many players, Emma Raducanu found the windy conditions challenging at Indian Wells. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
“Extremely awkward in the wind here,” said Raducanu, who was playing her first match with her new trial coach, Vladimir Platenik. Platenik previously coached Lulu Sun, who beat Raducanu at last year’s Wimbledon, and top-15 mainstay Daria Kasatkina.
“A lot of balls that were very, very spinny on these courts in the day and in the wind,” Raducanu said. “So it was just jumping up a lot, and then kind of short, like, almost like mishits.
“I didn’t really know what was coming.”
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.
Prior to the tournament, the BNP Paribas Open’s decision to change its court provider had dominated discussion among the players about conditions. At first evidence, the new Laykold surface is still bouncy, with the desert sand and grit in its paint sending balls spinning out of strike zones and roughing up the felt. It’s the swings in sun and cloud, hot and cold, and most of all, windy and calm that define conditions that Andrey Rublev has likened to playing four tournaments in one.
If the forecast is right — always a big if in the desert — the gusts will be lighter in the coming days, making life on the tennis courts easier to handle. Unless the bees swarm again.
(Top photo: Frey / TPN via Getty Images)
For years, Stephen A. Smith’s many football blunders have been easy enough to explain away.
He’s not an NFL guy (remember when he said the three key players for a game were three guys who weren’t playing in the game?)
Stephen A. Smith falsely claimed the Warriors haven’t made the playoffs since 2022, but Golden State reached the second round in both 2023 and 2025. (Jerome Miron/Imagn Images)
He’s definitely not a college football guy (remember when he called Jalen Milroe Jalen “Milroy” multiple times and then read the wrong stat line after a College Football Playoff game?).
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ESPN forces him into those conversations because First Take has to talk football, and Smith knows that football is the most popular sport in the country and he needs to be seen as an authority (even though he isn’t).
But Monday’s latest mistake is a lot tougher to excuse, because this time Smith wasn’t talking about the NFL or college football. He was talking about the Golden State Warriors, one of the defining NBA dynasties of the last decade.
In other words, he was talking about the sport and the league that’s supposed to be his bread and butter.
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While discussing whether Steve Kerr has coached his last game with Golden State, Smith confidently stated the Warriors “haven’t been back to the playoffs since that championship in 2022.”
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr looks on during a game against the Sacramento Kings. (Robert Edwards/Imagn Images)
That’s not even close to true. Not only did Golden State make the playoffs last season, but they also reached the postseason in 2023. Last year, the Warriors made the playoffs, beat the Rockets in seven games and advanced to the second round before losing to the Timberwolves. In 2023, they beat the Sacramento Kings in the first round and before losing to the Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals.
So, Smith wouldn’t even have been right if he said they haven’t won a playoff series since 2022. But he didn’t say that. He said they didn’t make the playoffs in any of the past four years, except they did it twice.
Yikes.
This is not an obscure piece of NBA trivia that Smith could be easily forgiven for not knowing. Perhaps he was too busy playing solitaire on his phone and just missed two of the past three NBA postseasons. That’s a tough look for the guy who fancies himself as the No. 1 NBA analyst in the country.
And it’s a terrible look for ESPN, as they keep selling Smith as one of the faces of their NBA coverage.
Stephen A. Smith made a brutal gaffe while talking Warriors playoff history
If Smith made this kind of mistake while talking about the NFL, nobody would be shocked. At this point, sports fans practically expect him to butcher football analysis. It’s almost endearing that a guy with the ego of Smith can be so consistently wrong while also delivering every “fact” with the utmost confidence. It’s part of the Stephen A. experience.
But this one hits differently because the NBA is where he’s supposed to at least know the basics. This is where Smith prides himself as being an authority figure.
Stephen A. Smith incorrectly stated the Golden State Warriors haven’t made the playoffs since their 2022 championship, despite the team reaching the postseason twice since then. (Candice Ward/Imagn Images)
And yet he couldn’t keep the recent playoff history of the Warriors straight. The team whose head coach is in the news every other week. The team that has won four championships since 2014. Arguably one of the most important franchises in the NBA over the past 15 years.
Yes, Golden State missed the playoffs in 2024 after getting bounced in the Play-In Tournament (although they won 46 games that season). And yes, it fell short again this season. But that’s a lot different from acting like Steve Kerr has spent four years wandering the basketball wilderness since winning that 2022 title.
He hasn’t. In fact, the team is 175-153 in the past four regular seasons.
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The Warriors made the second round in 2023. They made the second round again in 2025.
Before burying Steve Kerr on national television, maybe Stephen A. Smith could take 10 seconds to confirm whether the Warriors were actually, you know, in the playoffs.
A legendary NFL coach found linebacker Rod Martin not by scouting him at USC, but almost by accident.
The Oakland Raiders had a throwaway 12th-round pick in the 1977 draft, and then-coach John Madden grew frustrated hearing his personnel executives contemplate using it on a basketball player or track guy. Finally, Madden blurted out that he could find a random kid walking around the USC campus in sandals who could make more of an impact than that.
“Ron Wolf says, ‘All right, smart guy,’” recalled Madden’s son, Mike. “So they were a couple picks away and dad goes, ‘Let me call [USC coach] John Robinson.’”
Robinson had one question: Has Rod Martin been drafted?
Raiders linebacker Rod Martin stands on the field during a game against the Buffalo Bills on Dec. 6, 1987, at the Coliseum.
(Mike Powell / Getty Images)
“Dad goes, ‘What position does he play?’” the younger Madden said. “Robinson tells him Martin is a linebacker, and dad goes, ‘Good. Tough guy we can knock around in training camp. Have him run down on kicks.’ And Robinson says, ‘No, John. Rod Martin will make your team.’”
Martin did a lot more than make the team. He would go on to set a Super Bowl record with three interceptions in one of the most dominant defensive performances in championship history.
Martin, who would play his entire 12-year career with the Oakland then Los Angeles Raiders, is dead at age 72. The Raiders announced his death Monday but did not specify a cause of death.
“The Raiders family is deeply saddened by the passing of Rod Martin, a standout linebacker and key player on two Super Bowl championship teams,” read a team statement.
The franchise called Martin, “a beloved member of the Raiders Family and a favorite of Raiders fans everywhere.”
A two-time Super Bowl winner and a two-time Pro Bowl selection, Martin saved his best game for the biggest stage. In Super Bowl XV at the Louisiana Superdome, he intercepted Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski three times in a 27-10 Raiders victory.
“What I remember about Rod was his ability to diagnose and react,” Jaworski said by phone Monday. “In the Super Bowl, he makes two phenomenal plays. He has three interceptions, but interceptions one and two — I’d like to say they were bad decisions on my part. They weren’t. I tried to squeeze throws in. He just made a great play. He was a great athlete.”
Three years later, Martin was still a key component to the Raiders’ defense in a Super Bowl victory over Washington. He had a sack of quarterback Joe Theismann, a fumble recovery, and a fourth-and-one stop of John Riggins late in the third quarter of a 38-9 blowout.
Born in Welch, W. Va., the son of a coal miner grew up in Los Angeles and attended Hamilton High before going on to play at Los Angeles City College and USC. The NFL saw him as a tweener, too small for linebacker at 210 pounds and too slow to play safety. Clearly, that was a faulty assessment.
Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon was two years behind Martin at Hamilton, and the two remained friends throughout the decades that followed.
“We met when I was a sophomore,” Moon said. “He was a senior — middle linebacker, fullback and center on the basketball team. He was the ultimate athlete. At the time I was there, I looked up to him quite a lot.
“He wasn’t the biggest guy in the world, but he was big enough. He had the strongest hands and the strongest forearms. He could just take a tight end or whoever came to block him, grab his pads, shove him off and go make the play. He was just a real solid player.”
It was those hands that grabbed an opportunity with the Raiders and didn’t let go.
“So dad goes marching into the draft room,” Madden said, “looks at Ron and everybody else and says, ‘We’re going to take Rod Martin, linebacker, USC.’ And they did.”
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New details have emerged surrounding the arrest of former Georgia wide receiver Zachariah Branch, who is facing two misdemeanor charges following a run-in with law enforcement just days ahead of the NFL Draft.
Branch, who is a projected second-round pick, was arrested early Sunday morning in Athens, Georgia, and charged with two counts of obstructing public sidewalks/streets – prowling and obstruction of a law enforcement officer.
Georgia Bulldogs wide receiver Zachariah Branch celebrates after a touchdown catch against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Nov. 28, 2025. (Brett Davis/Imagn Images)
He was released after more than two hours in jail after posting $39 in bonds.
The NFL Network obtained the police report from Branch’s arrest, which described an encounter over an alleged sidewalk incident with law enforcement, in which police alleged that the former Bulldogs star failed “to comply with multiple verbal lawful commands.”
“A male, later identified as Zacharia Branch, continued to stand on the sidewalk without making an attempt to move. I continued to give Zacharia Branch verbal commands to move from blocking the sidewalk and advised that if he did not, he would receive a citation for blocking the sidewalk,” the excerpt from the report read.
Georgia wide receiver Zachariah Branch runs during the NFL Scouting Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind., on Feb. 28, 2026. (Kirby Lee/Imagn Images)
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“Zacharia Branch smirked, then stepped backwards and to the right, then remained standing upon the public sidewalk, so as to obstruct, hinder, and impede free passage upon the sidewalk as well as impede free ingress/egress to or from the adjacent places of business,” the report continued.
“Due to those actions and Zacharia Branch’s failure to comply with multiple verbal lawful commands, he was placed under arrest for misdemeanor Obstruction of LEO and received a citation for Obstructing Public Sidewalks.”
Georgia wide receiver Zachariah Branch celebrates with wide receiver Colbie Young after scoring a touchdown against Ole Miss during the Sugar Bowl at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, La., on Jan. 1, 2026. (IMAGN)
Branch transferred after two seasons at Southern California and immediately became quarterback Gunner Stockton’s favorite target. He finished the season with a team-high 811 receiving yards and six receiving touchdowns.
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His status as a projected second-round pick was bolstered after an impressive showing at the combine, where he clocked a 4.35-second 40-yard dash.
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