When we talk about achievements in professional sports, we’re almost always talking about feats of athletic bravado: an impossible catch, a bicycle kick or a diving save. But there’s also a particular corner of sports history where the narrative is driven more by gear than anything else — the deadball era of early 20th century baseball being one especially prominent example.
Are we living through something similar in tennis right now? That question has been the subject of a number of recent inquiries, most recently by The Guardian‘s Tumaini Carayol, whose reporting cites some of the biggest names in the sport. At issue, Emma Raducanu believes, is the way that the balls change as they get more use. “The way that they deteriorate is really challenging,” she told The Guardian. “I think it gets very fluffy.”
Earlier this year at Defector, The Changeover author Giri Nathan observed that pro players raising objections to the balls used in tournaments, from the quality of the balls themselves to the need for more consistency from tournament to tournament. (Though some of the players Nathan spoke with said that they appreciated some variety from competition to competition.) According to comments by ATP chair Andrea Gaudenzi cited in Nathan’s article, the ATP is looking into making the balls used from tournament to tournament more consistent.
A Tennis Vacation in the Midwest’s Golf Mecca
Most men go to Sand Valley to tee off on its dune-sculpted courses. I went in search of grass courts and “real tennis.”Is this a new phenomenon? Comments made by another ATP executive last year suggest that the debate over tennis balls might be connected to another essential piece of gear for the sport. ATP chief sporting officer Ross Hutchins told The New York Times, “It’s natural for the players to be sensitive to the changes because they now have so much feel on their rackets.” In an era where elite athletes’ gear is optimized dramatically, it’s not hard to see how one implement’s evolution can have an impact elsewhere in the sport.
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