“4 weeks – 4 totally different balls. When are tournaments going to take heed to gamers??”
Three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka was talking for a lot of professionals in his social media put up of late October.
Nick Kyrgios sympathises, with the Australian speculating that Novak Djokovic’s present wrist and forearm subject is likely to be all the way down to modifications within the balls.
“Modifications of balls each week lastly received to Novak’s wrist,” posted Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up, after the world primary had therapy on courtroom in Perth this week.
“The ATP really want to do one thing about the issue. Gamers endure on a regular basis.”
Kyrgios added: “The individuals who suppose balls aren’t a sufficiently big issue to lead to an athlete being harm are potatoes. The load by means of a participant’s elbow, wrist over this vigorous season is big.”
Tennis balls, made by competing producers, are removed from similar and with tournaments free to signal their very own contracts, gamers are pressured to cut and alter all through the season.
Fluffy balls which get more and more heavy and sluggish – and appear to be more and more standard – are the worst culprits.
The consequence, gamers consider, is extra frequent damage – whether or not to the shoulder of Stefanos Tsitsipas, the elbow of Vasek Pospisil, the arm of Marketa Vondrousova or the wrist of Taylor Fritz.
Rafael Nadal spoke this month of hitting a “useless” ball in Brisbane.
However there’s a chink of sunshine on the horizon, as the boys’s ATP Tour is eager to centralise the system so it has extra management over how a ball feels and performs throughout a sure stretch of the season.
There have additionally been discussions about whether or not the balls ought to be modified extra ceaselessly – maybe each seven video games slightly than each 9 – however it will want the settlement of the gamers, who’ve very totally different concepts in regards to the perfect velocity for a ball.
Gamers blame balls for accidents
Canadian Pospisil – a 2014 Wimbledon males’s doubles champion alongside Jack Sock – has a dispiriting latest damage file and says he has “no doubts” the balls have been a contributing trigger over the previous two years.
He mentioned a tear within the UCL tendon in his elbow final 12 months had come after deep runs at tournaments “in a few weeks the place all of the gamers had been complaining about how arduous and heavy the balls had been”.
“It does take a toll,” the 33-year-old instructed BBC Sport at November’s Davis Cup Finals. “Tennis is a big enterprise and it will be good to be handled as companions in that enterprise.”
Pospisil, who was a co-founder of the Skilled Tennis Gamers’ Affiliation, added: “I feel participant well being is extraordinarily vital and it would not do the game any favours if in case you have numerous the highest guys being injured.”
The ATP says damage ranges are in step with earlier years and there has not been a “big spike” in accidents in any specific a part of the physique.
“The match lengths have prolonged considerably the final 5 to 10 years – 20-plus minutes per match on common – and that may be attributable to quite a lot of components,” in accordance with the ATP’s chief tour officer Ross Hutchins.
“It is partly that the balls have created longer rallies, however that is additionally due to the strings gamers use, the best way gamers hit the ball, and the physicality of the best way they will retrieve balls is outstanding: it is all including to longer matches.
“It signifies that if we do not adapt the balls, or how we strategy our ball technique, the rallies are going to maintain getting longer, and the matches are going to maintain getting longer, which is one thing that I do not suppose is our need to have as an final result.
“We have not put any kind of path, need or mandate about making an attempt to have longer rallies and we’ve no intention to take action.”
American top-10 participant Taylor Fritz ascribed the wrist points he skilled within the closing months of final season to ball modifications, saying he used three differing types in three weeks.
Wawrinka was capable of go one higher, and highlighted the four balls he had to play with in four consecutive weeks on tour in Shanghai, Stockholm, Basel and Paris.
Russian 2021 US Open champion Medvedev mentioned he had a “very large ache” in his wrist after his third-round match with Sebastian Korda eventually 12 months’s Australian Open. He mentioned hitting one specific ball felt like hitting an apple, the extra it aged.
The identical Dunlop ball is used persistently all through January’s Australian swing, and I’m instructed the ball was essentially the identical final 12 months because it had been beforehand. However it was nonetheless unpopular with some round this time 12 months in the past.
“I feel that these balls will not be good for arduous courts. They get very fluffy, and as I say, it is a large shock to play them together with your racquet,” Medvedev mentioned on the Qatar Open, which got here three weeks after the Australian Open.
The sturdiness of the ball is the precedence and will probably be fascinating to see whether or not the 2024 mannequin is extra to Medvedev’s liking.
Gamers on the WTA Tour have voiced fewer considerations, however there have been grumbles from some on the US Open the place – satirically, and after lobbying from gamers together with world primary Iga Swiatek – girls used the identical heavy-duty balls as the boys for the primary time.
“They’re very heavy and the season is lengthy,” Wimbledon champion Vondrousova mentioned succinctly.
Why do tournaments use totally different balls?
Completely different surfaces demand a distinct kind of ball, and temperature and moisture are additionally important components: a ball used indoors in Turin on the ATP Finals will react in another way if hit by the identical gamers within the dry warmth of Melbourne on the Australian Open.
However there is no such thing as a robust taking part in motive why a Penn ball could be utilized in Indian Wells and a Dunlop ball on the subsequent outside arduous courtroom occasion in Miami just some days later.
Or why a Wilson ball ought to be used on the French Open when a Dunlop ball has been used for almost all of the clay-court season.
Dunlop, which BBC Sport has approached for remark, is the official ball of the ATP Tour and can stay so till not less than 2028 in a deal introduced in November.
Practically half of ATP occasions use the Dunlop ball, however so long as another is accredited not less than 90 days earlier than the beginning, particular person match house owners have loads of alternative to strike their very own industrial offers.
And sometimes they may really feel they should, simply to assist steadiness the books.
Is change on the best way?
Nadal introduced up the subject with out being prompted after his victory over Jason Kubler on the Brisbane Worldwide.
“To be trustworthy, the ball in that finish of the primary set was tremendous large,” he mentioned.
“It was troublesome to maneuver the ball the correct manner. I feel the ball will get too large generally, particularly beneath these humid and night time circumstances. I do not know what is going on on with the ball, but it surely’s useless.”
Pospisil – having spoken about taking part in with the “heaviest balls in historical past” and the “facade of collaboration” – says this 12 months is the primary of his profession the place he has designed his schedule across the balls in use, slightly than geographical location or courtroom floor.
“In a really perfect world you’d nonetheless get the person sponsorships by sure tennis ball corporations,” he mentioned.
“However have a standardised ball after which print the emblem specific to that firm – ensuring for those who’re taking part in on a grass courtroom it is one ball, taking part in on arduous courtroom it is one ball, and clay courts [it’s another].”
The ATP thought-about this feature however prefers to retain a collaborative relationship with the producers, who will nonetheless must work inside narrower specs in future.
Tournaments are more likely to have fewer balls to select from: so even when the model varies, the balls used within the South American clay-court season, for instance, ought to all really feel related and behave accordingly.
With multi-year contracts in place at some occasions, it might take some time earlier than the system is totally centralised, however the ATP’s need to behave is shared by the WTA.
Altering the balls extra ceaselessly in matches and having extra in play at anybody time would maintain them livelier and lighter for longer. Which may cut back damage and match occasions however would drawback gamers who like nothing higher than belting sluggish, heavy balls over the web.
This implies gamers might demand important discover of any change, and consensus could also be arduous to achieve.
