IIt didn’t take long for Daniil Medvedev to realize he was in serious trouble at the French Open. As he tried to find a way past Briton Cameron Norrie in the first round, Medvedev simply didn’t feel comfortable on the ball.
With his prospects of promotion in one of the world’s biggest tournaments dwindling, the 29-year-old has opted for a drastic solution. Medvedev asked for completely different strings when he sent his rackets in for re-stringing mid-match, switching from a hybrid of natural gut and polyester strings to an all-polyester setup.
It is common for players to change their string tension during a match, but few consider a change as dramatic as the actual string type. Medvedev has made the switch many times this year: “I had never done it until 2023,” says Medvedev. “Something started to change during the tour, I had to adapt. Now I’m never sure.”
Medvedev is referring to the properties of the tennis balls on tour and how small changes in their properties in recent years have left him unsure of how to optimize his game. The quality of balls on tour is one of the main talking points and sources of frustration among players around the world. “That’s probably the biggest difference I can notice, compared to maybe 10, 15 years ago,” Novak Djokovic said. “It’s the balls.”
One of the many key challenges of elite tennis is adapting to the different conditions each week, including the constantly changing balls. Different tournaments have their own contracts with ball manufacturers, which presents other problems. Injuries are often attributed to players having to adapt to different types of balls.
There is a growing consensus that many different balls on tour are decaying faster than ever before, which Emma Raducanu describes as difficult to navigate on the pitch and another risk for injury: “I really think the balls are a big challenge for all of us,” says Raducanu. “I think the way they’re regressing is really a challenge. I think it’s getting very fluffy. You’re seeing a lot of wrist, elbow and shoulder injuries happening now. And it’s hard because the dynamics of the points can be different from when they’re new and when they’re old.”
New tennis balls are covered in a tight layer of felt, but when they make contact with the strings of the racket and the surface of the court, it fluffs up, making the balls less aerodynamic and traveling more slowly through the air. The balls require more force to move quickly, meaning it’s harder to generate winners, and fluffier balls lead to longer rallies. Many players believe that nowadays they can play faster and more extensively. At least some of these issues can be attributed to problems with factory production lines during the Covid-19 pandemic, which affected the consistency and quality of felt supplied by suppliers to tennis ball manufacturers.
As players try to adapt, the sport itself is changing. Less powerful players like Norrie now believe it is even more difficult to impose their play with some balls. “I think in some tournaments the ball gets tangled more easily,” he says. “For players like me and Daniil it is not easy to generate as much as other players, and that costs me, or it is easier for other players. But to be honest, I never complain about the balls.”
Those who generate significant amounts of topspin have also felt the differences. A livelier ball accentuates the effects of heavy topspin, allowing the ball to bounce higher and travel further outside the opponent’s strike zone. Casper Ruud, who has one of the most spin-heavy forehands on tour, believes his shots are less powerful because of the balls: “I feel like the players are handling my heavy shots a lot better now than when I came on tour, which was pre-Covid, and they can just step in and pull the damn thing back and I’m quite surprised how well people are doing.”
Many players have addressed their ball problems by using natural gut strings in their rackets in addition to polyester strings, which helps to generate more power. Others switch to a looser string tension if they feel like they are having trouble generating tempo with certain balls. However, as is often the case in tennis, one player’s disadvantage is another player’s advantage. None of this has stopped Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner from dominating the sport this year. Both have such destructive weapons that they can still generate tremendous speed with slower balls.
No one has been more outspoken on this subject than Medvedev. Two and a half years after becoming number 1, he is trying to find his way through one of the most difficult periods of his career. Medvedev, who achieved one of his best results of the year this week by reaching the semi-finals of the Shanghai Masters, now sits at number 18 in the ATP rankings and he often describes the balls as his biggest obstacle.
Medvedev says he doesn’t want to be known as the player who “cries” after every match, but he’s just being honest: “Some players will like this ball, so I get it,” he says. “I’m crying because it’s hurting me. But if you take six balls out of the new balls in the can, if you look closely and bounce them, six different balls come out. I don’t think that’s the intention.”
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