Enter Pablo del Campo, an Argentine creative and tennis fan. Inspired by the mixed surfaces of a baseball stadium in Miami that he flew over as a child, Del Campo came up with the idea of a half-grass, half-clay court.
“When the outfield meets the infield, the grass meets the dirt… seeing that from above, I saw a hybrid tennis court,” said Del Campo, who had previously tried unsuccessfully to arrange a mixed-surface match between Pete Sampras and Gustavo Kuerten, the leading grass and clay players before the Federer-Nadal era.
Del Campo first approached Nadal and Federer’s teams in 2005 with the idea and both eventually agreed to an exhibition match on the mixed surfaces, with the Swiss saying it would be “fun” and “exciting”.
“I think that the idea was irresistible for both Federer and Nadal,” Del Campo told the BBC’s Sporting Witness podcast.
Construction of the court took 19 days, costing $1.63m (£1.28m), and organisers had to tackle a worm infestation, but finally the court – described as “one of the best images that I’ve ever seen in tennis” by Djokovic – was ready.
