Carlos Alcaraz does not mind a slow court. His complaint is the ball. Asked after Team Europe won the Laver Cup 13-5 at the O2 in London on Sunday about conditions that had looked slow all week, he started with a joke at his own expense.
“I mean, for me, I don’t mind slow courts (smiling). You know, especially with my serve, it’s not the biggest one,” he said, according to the ASAP Sports transcript. Then he made the point. “And now, you know, it’s getting slower, but I think it’s not about the courts. It is about the balls, I would say.”
“You know, we can see during a lot of tournaments how the balls’ reaction from the court is totally different. The ball becomes super big, and it’s totally different game when it’s new balls. We play two or three games with that balls, you have to adapt yourself the best you can.”
He said he had made a request, without naming who received it. “I don’t know where if they’re going to change it or not, but what I request is that they have to see the best ball possible for the courts are made, the tournaments we’re going to play. I think that’s a really important things to know.”
Not only Alcaraz. Jakub Mensik answered the same question first. He called London “one of the probably slowest surface that I have played on this year” among hard courts, and said of the balls, “I consider them that they were not that good.”
He said it a year ago. The complaint is not new for Alcaraz. After Taylor Fritz beat him 6-3, 6-2 at the 2025 Laver Cup in San Francisco, Alcaraz said: “I think these conditions, you know, it’s pretty slow. The balls are really big, so I had to be patient, I had to be solid.” He added, “It is really difficult when you are defending, turning to attack is really difficult because of the balls and the conditions that are really slow.” This year he reversed that result, saving two match points against Fritz on Saturday, the ATP reported.
What the rules already say. The pairing Alcaraz asked for is written into the Rules of Tennis. Any ball used in a tournament played under the Rules must be on the International Tennis Federation’s list of approved balls. The Rules provide three standard ball types: Type 1, the fast ball, is intended for slow courts; Type 2, the medium ball, for medium-slow, medium and medium-fast courts; and Type 3, the slow ball, for fast courts. Type 3 is physically larger, between 7.00 and 7.30 centimetres across against 6.54 to 6.86 for the other two. The ITF grades courts into five pace categories to support that matching; GTN’s court pace rating explainer sets out how the measurement works.
The wording matters. The ITF ruling says each type is “intended” for a court speed; it does not require an event to use a particular type. What the Rules do require is that organisers announce in advance how many balls are in play and the ball-change policy. When balls are changed after an agreed odd number of games, the first change comes two games early to account for the warm-up.
The test and the complaint. Alcaraz’s point about balls that grow after a few games is one the approval test only partly addresses. The ITF’s durability test uses laboratory equipment to simulate nine games of play, then measures the change. In the table of maximum permitted changes after that test, the ITF sets limits for mass, rebound and deformation, but lists no separate limit for how much the ball’s size may grow.
The lasting question. Players have pushed on two levers: how often balls are changed, which the ATP has looked at before, and which ball is used at all. Alcaraz’s request goes to the second, and the Rules already describe the answer he wants. Whether events act on it is another matter, and he said as much. “But, you know, who knows? What I can say is I’m trying to adapt myself and the game the best I can in the tournament that I go.” He starts his Japan Open title defense against Alex Michelsen this week.
