World No. 1 Iga Swiatek admits she is not happy with the US Open tennis ball rules as she thinks the men and women should play with the same type of balls. Two different types of balls are used for the US Open men’s and women’s events, which makes the US Open the only Grand Slam where that’s the case.
The women play with a bit lighter balls and Swiatek claims she has heard “many players” complaining about it. “We make more mistakes [with these balls], for sure,” Swiatek said, per Tennis365 “So I don’t think that’s really nice to watch visually I don’t know why they are different than men’s ones.
Fifteen years ago probably women had some elbow injuries because the balls were heavier and they changed them to women’s balls. But right now we are so physically well prepared that I don’t think it would happen.
I feel, it’s really hard to control them, but everybody has the same conditions, so we are trying to deal with that. I don’t get why they are different, honestly”.
Swiatek: We can’t loosen up our hands with these balls
Swiatek has elevated her game to a whole new level this season.
Swiatek is now a much more aggressive player and that approach paid off massively in the first six months of the season. But Swiatek hasn’t been convincing on hard this summer and the balls might be the reason why. “We [women] have really powerful games right now.
It’s not like 10 years ago. Right now we play powerful, and we kind of can’t loosen up our hands with these balls,” Swiatek added. In the end, Swiatek concluded by calling those type of balls “horrible” and “pretty bad.”
“I think those balls are horrible, especially after like three games of really hard playing, they are getting more and more light,” Swiatek said. “At the end, you can’t even serve at 170km/h because it’s going to fly like crazy. I think they are pretty bad”.
