A tennis ball rule change trial that could have a big impact on the ATP Tour
· Yahoo Sports
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This week, a big change could be coming to the ATP Tour, there’s a return to the sport’s favorite new conflict and tennis is back at a brilliant sports city.
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New balls for the ATP Tour, please?
Throughout the past two years of top-level tennis, players on both the men’s and women’s tours have held a common enemy: The thing they have to hit over and over again, point after point, game after game, set after set and match after match.
Whether too slow, too heavy, too fluffy, or in the case of the inimitable Daniil Medvedev, allegedly not round, tennis balls have come in for all kinds of criticism.
The ATP Tour has responded by moving to centralize ball distribution at tournaments, bidding to have each swing — a run of tournaments in the same part of the world, on the same surface type — using the same ball by 2029. It is now trying something else: Changing one of tennis’ longest-held rules.
At present, players start a match with new tennis balls. The balls are changed after seven games. From then on, they are changed every nine games. This system means players adjust their tactics (and often their string tensions on their rackets) through each stretch. Balls fly fastest and bounce highest when they are new; as they get hit repeatedly, their felt fluffs up, increasing air resistance on them and making them less lively.
But at a Challenger Tour event (one rung below the main tour) next month, there will be a trial of changing balls sooner, initially after five games and then after every seven, a spokesperson for the tour confirmed.
Medvedev, a former world No. 1 and the 2021 U.S. Open champion, is one of the most outspoken critics of the balls used on the ATP Tour. French Open champion Alexander Zverev and world No. 10 Taylor Fritz have also pushed for change. Players have attributed matches feeling longer and points feeling harder to end to slower and heavier balls, though tour data shows that rallies have remained stable or shortened over the past five years and whether or not a ball feels slow or not can be dependent on court conditions and a player’s game style.
This trial, if implemented across the tour, would have more impact on balls that get fluffier, faster — and would also mean that tournaments would require more balls per event. But if it shrinks the ball quality spectrum that players have to account for during matches, it is likely to be well-received.
How did players who have spent time in the tennis wilderness thrive in the same week?
It was so nearly a perfect Greek tennis weekend. Its two stars of the sport, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Maria Sakkari, who have spent time in their own versions of the tennis wilderness in the past year or two, both reached their first finals in over a year — and one of them did it in their nation’s capital.
That was Sakkari, who had not been to a final in over two years before she met Barbora Krejčíková at the Athens Open, as women’s tennis returned to the Greek city for the first time since the 2004 Olympic Games. This Athens Open was the first WTA Tour event in Greece since 1990, and it carried a special connection for Sakkari beyond that: Her mother, Angelikí Kanellopoúlou, reached the final in 1986.
Even as she lost the final 7-6(5), 6-3, and gave an emotional speech in Greek to her home crowd, the run felt like something of a victory for Sakkari.
“We’ve been through so much, we’ve done great things. I never thought I’d be standing today playing in front of this crowd … You (coach Tom Hill) my family, my grandfather and everyone, you’ve made me a player and have made this career possible. Thank you for believing in me like no one else,” she said during her on-court interview.
Tsitsipas, who has been through injury turmoil and a cycle of hiring and firing his father, Apostolos, as his coach, took the Swiss Open title in Gstaad, defeating Belgium’s Raphaël Collignon 6-4, 6-7(3), 6-3 to win his first title in over a year.
Russia’s Andrey Rublev, another member of the men’s tennis Sandwich Generation caught between the Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic triumvurate and the emergence of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, won the Swedish Open title in Båstad by defeating Italy’s Luciano Darderi.
Back on the WTA Tour, Paula Badosa, who has come through several years of injury setbacks, has the chance to win the Iaşi Open in Romania. The Spaniard’s final against Egypt’s Mayar Sherif was postponed to Monday after heavy rain washed out Sunday’s play.
Will more clay always mean more electronic line calling drama?
After Wimbledon ends, tennis takes a couple of weeks to return to clay courts in Europe before getting into hard-court season in earnest. That means a return to the sport’s favorite new conflict: The one between the ball mark and the electronic line calling system.
On his way to reaching his first tour-level final in eight years, Damir Džumhur of Bosnia and Herzegovina ran into it during his quarterfinal against Italy’s French Open semifinalist Matteo Arnaldi.
Arnaldi hit a serve that was called in as an ace. Džumhur saw the mark wide. Džumhur complained to the chair umpire, John Blom. The umpire said he could not intervene because ball marks are not to be considered when electronic line calling is in use, and the ELC system had verified that the ball had clipped the line.
Džumhur ultimately prevailed 7-6(5), 6-7(4), 7-6(4) in three hours and 42 minutes, but the incident was another example of players not yet getting to grips with how ELC works. There is a small margin for error of around 3 millimeters, though the mark Džumhur said was the one left by Arnaldi’s serve appeared to be further out than that.
The ATP and WTA Tours have also explained to players that ball marks on clay can provide a false impression of either where a ball bounced, or whether or not it nicked a line, because clay is a live surface with different amounts of red brick dust in different parts of the court. This is why chair umpires cannot inspect ball marks when ELC is in use — the two ways of adjudicating where a ball has bounced to not align with each other.
Similarly, chair umpires and line judges can be undermined by television replays which use a non-official version of ELC to show fans watching at home an impression that may not line up with a ball mark when inspected.
Players have been told all this — they just won’t necessarily remember it when a call happens in the heat of the moment.
🏆 The winners of the week
🎾 ATP:
🏆 Andrey Rublev def. Luciano Darderi 6-4, 6-3 to win the Swedish Open (250) in Båstad, Sweden. It is the Russian’s second title in Båstad and first ATP title since February 2025.
🏆 Stefanos Tsitsipas def. Raphael Collignon 6-4, 6-7(3), 6-3 to win the Swiss Open (250) in Gstaad, Switzerland. It is the former world number three’s first ATP title in 16 months.
🏆 Daniel Merida def. Damir Džumhur 6-2, 5-7, 6-2 to win the Umag Open (250) in Umag, Croatia. It is the Spaniard’s first ATP title in just his seventh ATP tournament.
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Barbora Krejčíková def. Maria Sakkari 7-6(5), 6-3 to win the Athens Open (250) in Athens, Greece. It is the Czech’s first win since Wimbledon in 2024.
📈📉 On the rise / Down the line
📈 Andrey Rublev moves up one place to No. 13 after his victory at the Swedish Open.
📈 Ben Shelton descends two spots from No. 6 to No. 8 but is still the highest-ranked American player in the ATP rankings.
📈 Francisco Cerundolo enters the top 20 after rising two spots from No. 22.
📈 Novak Djokovic rises two spots from No. 7 to No. 5.
📉 Mayar Sherif is the highest riser in the WTA rankings, moving up 24 places to No. 73 after reaching the final of the Iași Open (250).
📉 Anna Bondár drops the furthest, down 24 places to No. 97.
📉 Barbora Krejčíková moves up six spots to No. 26 after winning the Athens Open.
📉 Emma Navarro moves down one spot from No. 26 to No. 27.
📅 Coming up
🎾 ATP
📍Kitzbühel, Austria: Austrian Open Kitzbühel (250) featuring Flavio Cobolli, Alexander Bublik, Valentin Vacherot, Arthur Rinderknech.
📍Estoril, Portugal: Estoril Open (250) featuring Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, Alexander Blockx, Nuno Borges, Stan Wawrinka.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV
🎾 WTA
📍Prague: Prague Open (250) featuring Barbora Krejčíková, Nikola Bartůňková, Tereza Valentová, Alina Korneeva.
📍Hamburg, Germany: Hamburg Ladies Open (250) featuring Oleksandra Oliynykova, Yulia Putintseva, Anna Bondár, Paula Badosa.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel
Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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