The worlds best tennis players say something mysterious is going on with their balls

One of my favorite recent cultural acquisitions from the global mixing bowl of the professional tennis circuit is a Russian maxim about whining: “A bad dancer will even blame his balls for getting in the way.”On the tennis tours lately, it’s been many of the world’s very best tennis players complaining about tennis balls with increasing frequency.The balls are blamed after losses.

The balls are blamed for injuries.The balls just aren’t what they used to be. Tennis players are prone to nitpicking by nature — it’s inevitable in a high-stress sport with margins of millimeters.

But the increasingly unified complaints about balls have been rolling on for years now, with many veterans citing a change around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.The balls are irregular and inconsistent, they say, with felt that either fluffs up or thins out too quickly.Duds might require overexertion to propel powerfully, or could go sailing into the back fence with the lightest touch. At Wimbledon this year, 24-time Grand Slam singles champion Novak Djokovic recounted “quite a few conversations” he said he’d had with players and coaches about the topic.“We all agreed that, since COVID, something has changed,” Djokovic said.

“There was a change, no doubt.Some material — something — has changed that has affected the way the ball reacts nowadays.”Venus Williams, who turned pro in 1994, has often prided herself on not being bothered by small details during her career.“When you’re in Compton, you don’t sweat the details, truth be told,” she said when asked about modern ball quality. Williams then conceded, however, that she had noticed a dropoff. “There’s a lot of balls that have lost quality — even I can see that,” Williams said.

“So there has been a change.”Jessica Pegula, currently the highest-ranked American woman and a member of the WTA Player Council, said ball-quality discussions predominate.“We’ve talked a lot about these fric...