In the leadup to the WTA’s season finale each year, the competing players normally hope to spend their days making final preparations on the stadium court. There are, after all, countless details to fine-tune, from adapting to the speed of the court surface, to the wind and sun.
Not this time. As the eight best tennis players in the world arrived in Cancún last week for the WTA Finals, the stadium was still a messy building site and the hard court surface had yet to be laid. The venue is a temporary structure erected at short notice on the grounds of a luxury hotel resort and, to the displeasure of the players, it was not ready until the day before play began on Saturday morning.
