The Tennis Ball - Fascinating Facts

by Noel Callaghan

Over the the years the tennis ball has passed many stages before we got to the modern shape and material we use today.  Historians recorded that the history of the tennis ball dates back to the 1300s when French people started to play. 

The game was known as Jeu de Paume meaning “palm game”, with Paume being one of the country’s most favorite pastimes.

At that time the game was much different from our modern tennis. The ball used was made up of wood, but later people used leather and sawdust as filling material. The purpose of using sawdust was to add bounce. 

In the early 1870s lawn tennis arose in Britain through the pioneering efforts of Walter Clopton Wingfield and Harry Gem, often using Victorian lawns laid out for croquet. Wingfield marketed tennis sets, which included rubber balls imported from Germany.  

After Charles Goodyear invented vulcanised rubber, the Germans had been most successful in developing vulcanised air-filled rubber balls. These were light and coloured grey or red with no covering.  John Moyer Heathcote suggested and tried the experiment of covering the rubber ball with flannel, and by 1882 Wingfield was advertising his tennis balls as clad in stout cloth that were made in Melton Mowbray.

In the 1920s, the balls were pressured to get greater bounce and faster speed and at this time this was a huge innovative step. Nowadays the tennis balls are manufactured in factories but are still made by using vulcanised rubber, however the ball is now covered with felt.

Before 1925, tennis balls were sold in bags and cardboard boxes. Tennis balls were first sold in cylindrical moisture-proof cardboard tubes in 1925, when the Wilson-Western Sports Company came up with the idea. In 1926, the Pennsylvania Rubber Company (Penn) released a new airtight sealed pressurised metal tube that held three balls with a church key to open the top.  Not to be outdone a 1927 catalogue offers the Wilson balls in a “new patented airtight metal tube”, it's interesting that both Pennsylvania and Wilson produced cans with “Patented July 20, 1926” listed at the bottom of their cans.

Today the standardisation of the tennis ball is controlled by the ITF.  The modern ball should have a diameter of between 2.575 inches and 2.7 inches. They should also weigh no less than 56 grams, and no more than 59.4 grams. The only colours approved for competitive play are yellow and white. 

The year was 1972 when the standard ball changed from white to ‘flourescent yellow’ only because after a study it showed that this was better for television coverage. Wimbledon, however wanted to stick with tradition, but after 108 years of history, they surrended to the yellow ball in 1986.

Today there are over 200 different brands of tennis balls with over 350 million sold worldwide each year.

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SMART GOAL SETTING - Five Key Points

by Noel Callaghan

SMART GOAL SETTING - Five Key Points


Make your vision and dreams come true with “Goal Setting”. Goal setting is one of the most important skills taught to athletes in order to help them achieve optimal performance. The goal-setting process helps athletes understand where they ARE currently and where they want to GO. Athletes need to set systematic goals that focus on process and performance rather than the outcome of a specific tournament or match. Goal setting needs to be written down and then worked on effectively.

Welcome to the SMART System, a simple but effective way to do you "goal setting":-

SPECIFIC When creating a goal you need to be very ‘specific’. Don’t just write, “I want to be better at tennis”, define precisely what you want for eg., “I need to ensure that I am able to hit a minimum of 5 quality balls in every rally to make sure i am consistent” therefore the player might aim to hit with more topspin, have bigger margins - don’t hit so close to the lines or hit more balls cross court.

​MEASURABLE The point of setting “measurable” goals is making sure that you can tell, weekly or monthly, whether you are making progress or whether you need to adjust what you are doing. Your progress towards your goal can be measured by not only yourself, but also your coach, parent or fellow athlete. Use numbers as your measuring stick for eg., 5 quality balls can be increased to 7.

ACHIEVABLE Many times when creating goals people tend to “shoot for the moon”. Big goals are very important as anything is possible in this world. Players need to set multiple goals, Loft one's as previously mentioned (long term ultimate goals) and short term goals. Short term goals can be anything from what a player wants to achieve in the next session to three, six and twelve month goals. Make sure your goals are challenging, but realistic. Assess your current abilities and set a goal enough beyond yourself to challenge you and make you want to work towards it, therefore make sure you are able to make progress and always stay positive, have the utmost faith in yourself in order to achieve the goal.

​​RELEVANT Your goals should be important to you. Don’t set a goal just because your tennis friends have set goals. Your goals are YOUR motivation to follow through so make sure they are important to you and this is something that you really want. When coaches ask a junior players what their goals are most of them say "number one in the world" with out even thinking about it. While this is a great goal, it is important to have goals that really come from inside, your inner belief. Its not a bad thing is your goal is to get a college scholarship at a division one school when all of your friends say that they want to turn pro and win a grad slam. Remember, goals are personal, so make sure you set goals that are relevant to you!

TIMELY Every goal should have a completion date. If you don’t do this it’s too easy to just keep putting it off to ‘one day’. Goals have been called ‘dreams with a deadline’, so set a timeline for you to achieve each of your goals. For e.g. “I will have a kick serve in 10 weeks”. When you set a time frame, it allows you to see progress. Sometimes it is hard to see the improvement that we are making, especially as we rise up the ranks. For more advanced players, improvements are often very small but extremely important. It doesn't matter if you don't reach your goal in the timeframe you put forward, players are constantly assessing their goals and making adjustments. If you didn't quite reach your goal this time around, talk to your coach about where you can improve and what additional things need to happen in order for you to achieve it.

SMART tennis players and diligent and organised in achieving their goals.