Casper Ruud has been talking a lot lately, and it is brilliant. He recently voiced his problem with Saudi Arabia (and China) hosting tennis events. The Norwegian player doesn’t necessarily like it. He didn’t rule out playing eventually in Saudi Arabia, but he feels accepting money to do so only legitimizes some of the Saudi’s reported human rights issues.
Ruud now has a new complaint, and it is directed more toward his fellow players. The issue has to do with the ever-changing balls between tournaments. Some events might play with one brand, and the next week, a different tournament will play with a different brand. The weight of the balls could be different and some players believe this could lead to joint injuries.
In theory, that makes sense. If a baseball player had to deal with different weighted balls, that would certainly cause a strain on one’s elbow and shoulder. Using different balls and successive events could potentially do the same.
Ruud, though, thinks players complaining about the issue does no good. To be fair, in context, he is not wrong. Without saying his name, Ruud appeared to direct comments made on the Nothing Major podcast at Daniil Medvedev. At the Shanghai Masters, Medvedev requested a tournament supervisor during his second-round match to complain about the balls being used. There was nothing the supervisor would have been able to do.
The Norwegian player said on the podcast, “You see players complain about the balls all the time. I’m getting so tired of it. Come on. Just play…(players) come to the fourth round and start complaining about the balls. But it’s been the same balls for the past nine days. What’s the point of bringing it up now to the umpire? Like what is he gonna change? What’s the point? Just to make drama out of nothing.”
The issue is that we now have players complaining about the use of different brands of tennis balls, and now players are complaining about the original complaints. That only compounds the problem. There is a simple solution to it all, but it would take a lot of money.
One brand of tennis ball – Dunlop, Wilson, or some other top brand – needs to make a pitch to become the official ball of the ATP (and WTA) tour. That would mean the brand would pay the sport a lot of money to do so, but the company could make that back through marketing efforts. That is not going to happen, however, so tennis fans will have to keep listening to all the complaints.
