Razeen Gutta
The US Open has come under fire for being the only grand slam where different tennis balls are used for men’s and women’s matches.
Ahead of the tournament’s start on Monday, the tennis balls used were brought up in Iga Swiatek’s press conference — with the world number one calling the Wilson US Open regular duty balls “horrible”.
During the grand slam, men will use Wilson’s US Open extra duty balls, while the women use the thinner, less fluffy regular duty balls. This leads to extra pace and more flight, but more so, it also leads to calls of inequality in the game.
“I think those balls are horrible, especially after three games of really hard playing. They are getting more and more light. At the end, you can’t even serve 170 km per hour because you know it’s going to fly like crazy. Yeah, I think they are pretty bad. Sorry,” Swiatek said.
“Right now we play powerful, and we kind of can’t loosen up our hands with these balls. I know that there are many players who complain, and many of them are top 10. We make more mistakes, for sure. So I don’t think that’s really nice to watch,” she added.
Her final words as she left the press conference, however, were: “You’ve just started a war.” The debate has seen a host of top female competitors expressing their displeasure, while the United States Tennis Association (Usta) defended their decision.
“A number of factors are considered in these decisions, and the Usta will continue to follow the recommendations of the tours and their player councils to determine which balls are utilised during the US Open,” they said in a statement.
The regular duty balls are reportedly recommended based on the fact that they place less strain on the arms. And despite the complaints from some, players like Madison Keys and Petra Kvitova said that they quite enjoy the pace and flight that the balls provide.
“It’s my favourite ball. I mean, it’s what we practice with all of the time. They don’t get as fluffy,” said Keys, who defeated Swiatek at the Cincinnati tournament last week.
Image source: @NPR
