Does Size Matter?

It used to be you could go down to the local store and pick up a can of tennis balls on your way out to the courts. Any can would do, just as long as they were in a pressurized tube, new balls were new balls. Now you have all kinds of decisions to make, with many more choices out there facing you.

The easiest thing to know about tennis balls is that the numbers on them don't mean anything, so it doesn't matter, except that you want to have something different than those on an adjacent court so that when their ball come onto your court it's easy to tell them apart.

Like a tennis court and the rackets you play with, tennis ball also have standard measurements. Tennis balls are basically inflated rubber covered with fabric, or felt. They must be between 2.50" and 2.625" in diameter, and weigh between 2.0 ounces and 2.0625 ounces. Tennis balls are generally white or yellow, with black numbers for hard courts and red for clay courts.

That's where the easy stuff ends, and it gets a bit more complicated. Tennis balls come in a choice of "Regular Duty" (for indoor or clay courts), "Extra Duty" (for outdoor and grass courts) and "High Altitude" (4,000+ feet above sea level). These variations are accomplished, all or in part, by changes in the felt covering the actual rubber ball. Also on the market are titanium tennis balls, made by blending titanium powder into the rubber, and pressureless balls, which have a solid rubber core and tend to last the longest of any.

Another entrant into the tennis ball market is a shock-reducing ball from Dunlop called the Abzorber. The intent of this ball is to lower your chances of getting tennis elbow by reducing the impact on your arm. Claims by Dunlop are that the impact is reduced by 15% as compared to a Wilson U.S. Open ball.

One more twist in the quest for the perfect tennis ball - the oversize tennis ball, which is 6% larger than the current standard. Motivated by the increasingly fast game of men's professional tennis, the larger balls were designed to slow down rallies and make it more enjoyable to watch. The balls are being used in test markets and tournaments now through the end of 2001, when a decision will be made. It's likely that other options will be considered as an alternate for slowing down the professional game.

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