Novak Djokovic was the highest-profile player to complain about the quality of tennis ball at this year's Wimbledon. Many players have speculated that the quality of the ball is factoring into the numerous upsets that have taken place.Alastair Grant/The Associated Press
As he sat down for a changeover during his first-round match at Wimbledon this week, Canada’s Denis Shapovalov started ranting at no one in particular. His main complaint: the balls.
Shapovalov loudly voiced his view that the balls had lost their zip and that the once speedy courts of Wimbledon had become slower than the clay surfaces of the French Open.
“The balls are the worst. This grass-court tour has become a joke. This isn’t grass. The court is slower than clay,” he vented.
It would be easy to argue that this was all sour grapes and a show of frustration from Shapovalov, a top 30 player who lost the match to a 91st ranked Argentine. But other players have raised similar concerns and argued that slower, heavier balls are one reason so many top seeds have been knocked out this year.
Over the first two-rounds of play a record 36 seeded players have gone down to defeat. That included eight top 10 players across men’s and women’s singles, the most of any Grand Slam since the start of the open era in 1968 when professionals were allowed to enter.
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Shapovalov was among the losing seeds along with fellow Canadians Félix Auger-Aliassime and Leylah Fernandez.
Grass courts are considered the fastest in tennis and Wimbledon generally favours players with big serves. But some players say the balls have started to fluff up after a few games, which makes them bigger and slows their trajectory. That can dull the impact of a fast serve and decrease the ball’s bounce, resulting in longer rallies which benefit some players.
“The biggest difference I can notice, comparing to maybe 10, 15 years ago; it’s the balls,” seven-time Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic told reporters this week. “The Slazenger balls here used in Wimbledon are good-quality balls, but they do fluff up earlier or sooner than the ones that we used 10 years ago or 15 years ago.”
Wimbledon has used Slazenger tennis balls since 1902. The tournament goes through about 55,000 balls during each championships. In matches, new balls are used after the first seven games, to take into account warm up, and then changed after every nine games.KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images
Djokovic said grass remains a fast surface but the balls are “slowing the game down to some extent.”
“It’s allowing the players whose game is based on the baseline to play with a lot of spin, to be able to play good tennis and make good performances and success here in Wimbledon or other grass court tournaments, and that wasn’t maybe the case before,” he added.
“If you’re serving well, you still get rewarded. But it is true that it’s easier to play from the baseline nowadays than was the case early in my career.”
Britain’s Emma Raducanu echoed that sentiment and said the slower balls benefit heavy-hitters. “I feel like once they’re a few games in or a few long rallies in, these Slazenger balls really fluff up quite quickly and get quite heavy and slow,” she said during a press conference this week. “I think it benefits the bigger hitters because they have time to load and give it some.”
Wimbledon has been using Slazenger balls since 1902 and the tournament goes through about 55,000 during each championships. In matches, new balls are used after the first seven games, to take into account warm up, and then changed after every nine games.
Tournaments are generally free to select balls made by a variety of manufacturers. The French Open and U.S. Open use balls made by Wilson and the Australian Open uses Dunlop. However, the International Tennis Federation sets the regulations for the balls’ weight and size. They must weigh between 56 grams and 59.4 grams, and measure 6.54-6.86 centimeters in diameter. Those standards have been in place for decades.
Wimbledon organizers said ball speed has been affected by hot weather this week which has caused the balls to stick a little more to dryer blades of grass. “You and I, we might not notice that but when you are a top athlete you will see those nuances where the ball may feel like it is coming in slower and it is just allowing that 10th of a second for a player to be able to adapt,” Wimbledon’s head groundsman Neil Stubley told the BBC.
Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, who lost in the first round, said having a strong serve had always been a big advantage for her at the tournament, but the slower grass was nullifying that edge. “I’m not sure if it’s only grass. Maybe it’s the balls, as well. Over all it’s getting slower. That’s what I do feel,” she said this week during a news conference.
Jessica Pegula, a top-seeded player who lost in the first round, took a more philosophical approach to the issue. All the courts were different, she said after her loss, including the practice ones. “I mean, that’s grass. They’re all kind of different, because it’s a living surface. They’re not all going to play the same.”