That if they get bigger as soon as you start using them, that if it is impossible to move them with speed, that if they make the game too slow… Complaints, complaints and more complaints. The general trend among most tennis players in the first week of Roland Garros It has been putting the balls on the trigger with which the 91st edition of the Parisian Grand Slam is being played. Wilsonthe brand that supplies them, is pointed out even by those who carry their rackets, turning the issue into a cry in the locker room of the circuit.
“I have spoken with many players and we all think that the balls this year they are slower than in previous years. This makes it very difficult to land a winning shot“, Novak Djokovic explained this Friday after beating Alejandro Davidovich from Malaga. “You have to work more on each point, it prolongs the duration of the matches and requires more energy,” added the Serb, pointing to the balls as one of the main reasons for the large number of matches that have reached the fifth set in the first week of the tournament.
“Are placed very heavy and very fat. And that it is sunny and hot, so they fly more. I don’t want to imagine this ball in the rain or with a very heavy surface. It is a ball with which you can hurt yourself in long matches”, assured Roberto Bautista, who is sponsored by Wilson, which is usually a small advantage when being able to work previously with the same balls. Although in this case it does not seem to have been the case.
“The ones here are not the same as the ones they sent me. It is slow, the elbow suffers from it, he feels it, and the wrist too. It is not the same feeling that I had with these balls at home in the previous weeks”, added the tennis player from Castellón, eliminated in the second round by the Peruvian Juan Pablo Varillas, a match after which he was visibly upset with the situation, arguing that it benefited ” to the two-meter guys who have a lot of strength and who generate a lot”.
“The ball it gets very big and like it’s fluffy. That makes it very difficult to hit winners because the conditions get incredibly slow. I feel a big difference compared to last year”, complained, for his part, the Danish Holger Rune, confirming the feelings of a large majority of the players on the circuit, fearful that the issue will not be resolved as the tournament progresses.
“The tracks are great, the atmosphere that is breathed as well, but definitely, the balls do not benefit me at all“, the number six in the world abounded, who is having a hard time giving strength to his favorite blow, the topspin, to be really effective.
Brand change in 2020
To find the origin of the complaints, you have to go back to 2020, when after many years using Babolat brand balls, Roland Garros signed an agreement with Wilson to be the official supplier until 2025. Things did not start well, since that edition, held in October due to the pandemic and in unusually cold and humid conditions for the great Parisian, began to show signs of behavior very similar to the current one.
It was then that Daniel Evans uttered a phrase to remember, and which still resonates throughout the Bois de Boulogne today. “Some of the balls we use I wouldn’t give to a dog to bite them”, said the British sarcastically about a problem for which Wilson, three years later, has still not found a solution. Despite the fact that in 2021 and 2022, with the return to the usual dates, it was attenuated, without become fully mitigated, this year the complaints have returned with more force than ever.
“They are trash”
Neither the sun nor the good temperatures that have been the protagonists during all these days have prevented the balls from lose life as soon as some games pass, or just a few points depending on who complains, and they become very heavy. This benefits players who hit flat and hard, without needing to put too much spin on the ball, and complicates those who need effective topspin, requiring them to apply a lot of power in all joints to compensate for that deficit.
“In my opinion, the players who have, I don’t know how to say it, like a wrist game, like my opponent today, like Carlos (Alcaraz), I think Stefanos (Tsitsipas) a bit, they have a great advantage with these balls Because they can create an easy dominance, which I don’t have”, explained Daniil Medvedev, who went one step further, and after losing in the first round against the unknown Brazilian Thiago Seyboth Wild pointed directly to the balls as the main reason for his early and amazing removal.
“balls are messy. When I trained outside of Roland Garros, the ball flew, but it’s not like that here,” said Laslo Djere, number 60 in the ATP ranking this weekend. “It’s Roland Garros, one of the best tournaments in the world, and we are playing with these stupid balls. They’re ridiculous, they don’t last a game, a trash. You cannot play tennis with these types of balls. You cannot attack, you cannot advance and it is impossible to take a direct kick”, recriminated the always controversial Benoit Paire.
More restrained has been, for his part, Carlos Alcaraz, little inclined to look for excuses in what is alien to him. “They are a little heavy, but I don’t dislike them at all. I do feel that it is harder, that the ball is going slower, it is more difficult to hit as hard as I want. But I adapt my game really well”, acknowledged the number one, who this Friday got rid of Canadian Denis Shapovalov and continues to advance firmly on the path to what would be his second Grand Slam. “The only thing I would change about tennis would be that the balls with the ones we played were the same everywhere. It is difficult to have to adapt your game in each tournament because the balls are different”, added the Murcian, pointing to a possible solution, perhaps the only one that can be assumed right now.
2023-06-03 08:06:16
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