Either they get bigger as soon as you start using them, or it’s impossible to move them quickly, or they slow down the game too much… Complaints, complaints and more complaints. General trend among most tennis players in the first week Roland Garros He was putting the balls on the trigger The 91st Paris Grand Slam is being played. wilsonAttention is drawn to which brand is supplied even by those who carry their racquets, and this turns the issue into a topic. a cry In the locker room of the circuit.

“I’ve talked to a lot of players and we’ve all had this year’s balls. they are slower Compared to previous years this does it’s so hard to get a winning shot“, Novak Djokovic explained this Friday after beating Malaga’s Alejandro Davidovich. The Serbian player said, “You have to work harder at every point, it stretches the duration of the matches and requires more energy.” numerous matches reaching the fifth set In the first week of the tournament.

“They were placed too heavy and too fat. And the weather is sunny and warm, so they fly more. I don’t want to imagine this ball in the rain or on very heavy ground. it’s a ball you can hurt yourself Wilson-sponsored Roberto Bautista said that being able to work with the same balls as before is often a minor advantage.

“What’s here is not the same as what they sent me. Slow, the elbow suffers from it, it feels and the wrist too. It’s not the same feeling I had with these balls at home in previous weeks,” added the Castellón tennis player, who was knocked out in the second round by Peruvian Juan Pablo Varillas and was visibly annoyed afterward, arguing that it benefits “two-metre guys who are very strong and produce a lot”.

“ball it gets so big and fluffy. This makes it very difficult to hit the winners because conditions are incredibly slow. I feel a big difference compared to last year,” complained Denmark’s Holger Rune, confirming the feelings of the vast majority of players on the track who feared that the problem could not be resolved as the tournament progressed.

“The tracks are great, the atmosphere exhaled but definitely, balls are useless to me“He was the world’s number six blunder, who had trouble powering his favorite hit, topspin, to be truly effective.

Brand change in 2020

In order to find the source of the complaints, it is necessary to go back to 2020, when Roland Garros, which had been using Babolat brand balls for many years, signed a contract with Roland Garros. Wilson will be official supplier by 2025. Things didn’t start well as this 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 what it is now.


Gael Monfils is at Roland Garros. Christine Poujoulat


It was then that Daniel Evans uttered a phrase that must be remembered and that resonates today in the Bois de Boulogne. “I wouldn’t give some balls we used to a dog The British spoke sarcastically about a problem that Wilson still hadn’t found a solution to three years later. completely mitigated, complaints have come back stronger than ever this year.

“they are garbage”

Neither the sun nor the good temperatures, which were the leading roles in all these days, did not prevent the balls from coming. lose your life as soon as some games pass, or just a few points depending on who’s complaining, and these get overwhelming. This benefits players who hit the ball straight and hard without needing to give the ball too much spin, and complicates those who need effective topspin by requiring them to apply a lot of force to all joints to compensate for this deficit.

“I think, I don’t know how to put it, it’s like a wrist game, like my opponent today, like Carlos (Alcaraz), I think there’s a bit of Stefanos (Tsitsipas), their great advantage With these balls, because they can create an easy space that I don’t have,” said Daniil Medvedev, he went a step further and, after losing against unknown Brazilian Thiago in the first round, Seyboth Wild cited direct balls as the main reason for his early and surprising removal.

“balls scattered. “When I trained outside of Roland Garros, the ball flew, but not here,” said Laslo Djere, who is 60th on the ATP standings this weekend. “I’m Roland Garros, one of the best tournaments in the world and we play with these dumb balls. They’re ridiculous, they’re not based on a game, rubbish. You cannot play tennis with such balls. You can’t attack, you can’t advance, and a direct hit is impossible,” denounced the always controversial Benoit Paire.

Carlos Alcaraz, on the other hand, is not inclined to make excuses for things that are foreign to him. “They’re a little heavy, but I don’t like them at all. I feel like it’s harder, the ball goes slower, it’s harder to hit as hard as I want to.. But I’m adapting my game really well,” he confirmed, a number one who survived Canadian Denis Shapovalov this Friday and is on his way to his second Grand Slam. “The only thing I would change about tennis is that the balls we play are the same everywhere. . Adapting your game to each tournament is difficult because the balls are different,” Murcian added, pointing to a possible solution, perhaps the only one that can be assumed at the moment.