Not All Tennis Balls Are the Same

Yellow felt and a rubber nucleus. A tennis ball seems so simple. But the reality is more complicated, at least in professional tours where manufacturers can make balls that fit a variety of specifications. And in recent years, with players forced to change different balls in so many tournaments, they have begun to complain about the consistency and quality of balls like never before.

Novak Djokovic spoke. Also Rafael Nadal did. And Taylor Fritz, Daniil Medvedev, Stan Wawrinka and Andrey Rublev. The different balls not only damaged the quality of the game, according to the players and coaches, but the athletes blamed them for the increase in the shoulder, the elbow and, especially, the wrist injuries.

“The quality of the best balls has decreased in recent years,” said Craig Boynton, who trained Hubert Hurkacz. “They should not only choose the ball that will pay the greatest amount of money to associate with a tournament, but what is the best real ball.”

The lower quality balls can feel like rocks at the beginning of a game and then “sponge like small kittens” after some games, Boynton said. When Het occurs, “players who try muscle the ball more” balance with more force to compensate for what the ball lacks can be joked.

But that is just half of the story, Boynton said. Wayne Ferreira, the former French coach Tiafoe, said that even when the balls were of high quality, there were too different at stake. The players often saw different brands every week.

“Some are heavy and others are lighter, and making that adjustment all the time is difficult,” he said.

The list of unhappy players grew so much and criticism so strong that the ATP and WTA felt forced to respond. Earlier this year, they promised an exhaustive review of the subject.

“It is natural that players are sensitive to changes because they now have such a feeling in their rackets,” said Ross Hutchins, ATP sports director. “This has been a challenge to be honest for decades, but we realized that we could do better.”

He said they had made great progress. The ATP analyzed the manufacturing balls, but Insead decided that the best solution was to centralize the ball purchase process that had long been left to individual tournaments.

They considered having a manufacturer throughout the season, but in their place they established the goal of having only one ball, whether Wilson, Penn, Babolat, Dunlop or another, in use for each swing, Hutchins said. He added that a swing could vary from a handful of tournaments to so many axis 10 in a given region and on a specific surface.

Then, the year begins with a change through Australia and New Zealand, followed by those who through Middle East and North America. All these tournaments are playing outdoors in hard courses, but it is possible that each group use a different ball.

Later in the year there will be a ball for the European swing of the clay court, the court of the court and so on. The ATP is coordinating with the WTA to use the same balls as much as possible, especially where men and women play in the same place.

“The ATP will make the negotiations and supervise the development of the ball with the manufacturers to obtain the best balls for each swing,” said Hutchins.

The process was this year, and said that as each agreement ended between individual and manufacturers, the ATP would bend those tournaments in a centralized process. Five more will be added next year, and by 2026 they will control more than 75 percent of the tournaments, with 2029 as the objective date of “total alignment where we control everything,” he added.

The exception is the Grand Slams, which operate independently of the ATP and WTA and have their own agreements with ball manufacturers. “Slams are an important gear in the tennis wheel, but we have tons of tournament around them and we can control what we can control,” said Hutchins.

He said that the Australians and the United States open and Wimbledon have good leg collaborators, so the balls used in the Slams will coincide with those used in the tournament that leads to them, with only the France Open as an ATP that is used as a Dunlop Hals is used to Dunlop Halha Wilson.

“We hit thousands of balls per day, which puts stress on their tendons and muscles, so this change would produce a more consistently high level of game and a better product for sport and our fans,” said Matthew Ebden, president of the ATP player. (Ebden occupied the number 1 in double this year).

While Ebden said that any improvement would be positive, I expected the brands to be challenged by the ATP to accumulate the quality and integrity of their balls.

Hutchins said that while the directors and manufacturers of the tournament were cautious at the beginning, they have an “extremely reception” leg. He said that ATP also pressed manufacturers to make more than the basic specifications and understand the Conerns of the players and see what adaptations they could do.

“If they do not continue, we won continuous with them,” he added. “But I can’t think of a case that the manufacturer was derogatory of our comments.”

Boynton said there were numerous variables in each swing, such as altitude, heat and humidity and the speed and sandy of the hard courts. In response, Hutchins said that “the appropriate ball supplier selection, made of taking into account the conditions throughout the swing.”

Hello, he added that they intended to “optimize the performance of the ball to specific conditions while riding the same ball mark on the swing.”

Ferreira said it would be impossible to explain each variable, including players with differentiation styles (Big Server versus an agile defender, for example) who wants different things from each ball.

“Ultimately, everything is part of the game, and you have to make some settings,” he said. “It will be perfect for all the time, so the best thing you can do is provide consistency.”