Aryna Sabalenka has joined a growing list of players complaining about the tennis balls used at the 2023 China Open.
Tennis balls have been a talking point for much of this year and are a very valid topic. Over this year, we've seen many players explain how the ball changes impact players, with some even wondering whether it had anything to do with the injuries we've seen.
Elbows, shoulders, and wrists are common tennis injuries, but the rate it has been happening more recently has been quite alarming. Medvedev spoke about it earlier this year, but he's hardly the only one. We've seen players complain at Roland Garros during the US Open stretch and now even in China, with Sabalenka being the latest one.
I cannot imagine what’s happening with the men’s game because the rallies are longer and the ball’s getting even bigger. Today after a couple of games, the balls were getting heavier and bigger. Because of that, the game was getting slower. It’s tough. It’s tough conditions. I don’t know, but it seems to work good for me, so I’m like, It’s okay. (But) I would prefer probably different balls for this surface.
The balls getting bigger is a common complaint and most of it has to do with slowing down the matches. You can't really hit a winner easily with these types of balls which extends the rallies and consequently extends matches.
The modern style of tennis is rather snappy with short rallies, but that's not a great watch, so there is much talk that this is an attempt to fight that. We'll see what happens in the future, but players are complaining more and more, and Tours are not really listening, so it seems like we're heading to a collision in the future.
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