Wilson has already been asking which balls the U.S.T.A. What will happen with the balls next year is anyone’s guess, but Allaster said the WTA would need to decide what to do soon. Or maybe the balls will have nothing to do with the outcome. Pegula and Swiatek will meet Wednesday in the quarterfinals, a match that could become a test between Pegula’s flexibility and Swiatek’s ability to think about other things besides the balls. “You accept the thought, because it’s already there, and move on, refocus, find anchor in something else.” “It’s like I would tell you right now not to think about a blue elephant for a minute, and literally the first thing popping into your mind is this blue elephant,” Abramowicz said. They have talked plenty about all the challenges created by these balls that Swiatek so despises.Ībramowicz does not tell Swiatek not to think about the balls because then the first thing she will think about is the balls. That has been the challenge for Swiatek, who travels with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz. “Something feels off, you have to make a change,” Pegula said “It’s important not to let it frustrate you too much.” The challenge can be as much mental as it is physical. Tennis, though, is all about making adjustments and finding solutions as the conditions change throughout a match, and a tournament, and a season. 1.) The latest gripes started earlier this summer, when the players began playing with these balls in the lead-up to the U.S. (Barty retired in March at age 25, while ranked as the world No. Open as long as the tournament used the Wilson regular-duty balls. After Ashleigh Barty won the Australian Open in January, her coach, Craig Tyzzer, said she would never win the U.S. The ball controversy has had previous iterations. The WTA will continue to monitor and discuss the matter, Binder said, though she said the decision on the ball ultimately rested with the U.S.T.A. “As far as we know, a majority likes it, so we could end up trading one problem for another.”Īmy Binder, the chief spokeswoman for the WTA, confirmed that the players and the sports science teams have favored the faster regular-duty balls, but executives have heard from “a select number of our athletes that they would like to consider a change.” asks the WTA what balls it wants to use, and the answer has always been the same. Open, except when they are not.Įvery year, Allaster said, the U.S.T.A. Extra-duty balls are the balls of choice for outdoor hardcourts, like those at the U.S. Two days later, she was out of the tournament.Īnother point of complication and confusion: Regular-duty balls are always used on clay courts and other surfaces that are moist because they don’t collect the moisture the way the looser felt of the extra-duty balls do. “You feel more like you’re playing Ping-Pong sometimes,” Badosa said after her first-round win. Paula Badosa, who was seeded fourth and lost in the second round, hits as flat as anyone. Players who hit a flatter ball, like Coco Gauff, or Pegula or Madison Keys, don’t have this problem as much. Those who rely heavily on that spin can struggle to make a regular-duty ball travel the way they want it to, especially after a few games, when the ball begins to lose whatever fluff it had right out of the can and gets smaller. The additional friction of a fluffy ball allows players to create maximum spin. Players often make contradictory complaints in the same tournament, or even the same day, about the same thing. 1 from Poland, has called them “horrible.” That is so tennis. Pegula, who has lost just one set in four matches, and that one in a tiebreaker, happens to love the balls. These yellow spheres are loved and loathed. This is the only Grand Slam event where the women and the men use different balls. Open this year as the women - well, some of them - have waged a rebellion over the Wilson balls they have used for years at the tournament. “Some weeks you don’t play well, and you got to blame it on something,” joked David Witt, who coaches Jessica Pegula, the American who reached the quarterfinals on Monday with a win over Petra Kvitova.Īnd so it has been at the U.S. It’s too cold, or too hot, or too sticky, or too sunny. Tennis players are the Goldilocks characters of sports.
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