After years of players blaming modern tennis balls for a wave of arm injuries, the ATP appears ready to do something about it. The men’s tour is set to trial more frequent ball changes at a hard-court Challenger event next month — the first tangible sign that a complaint voiced by some of the sport’s biggest names, Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Emma Raducanu among them, is finally being heard.
The experiment is due to take place at the Lexington Challenger in Kentucky, which begins on August 3. According to reporting from tennis insider Parsa Nemati that has since been picked up widely across tennis media, main-draw singles matches will see the first ball change after five games rather than the usual seven, with subsequent changes every seven games instead of every nine. The measure is said to carry the backing of the ATP’s Player Advisory Council and to follow sustained feedback about how quickly balls wear down on hard courts.
The logic is straightforward. A fresh ball is lively and predictable, but as the felt fluffs up and the ball grows heavier, players have to swing harder to generate the same pace — precisely the kind of repeated strain many believe is driving an epidemic of wrist, elbow and shoulder problems. Changing balls sooner, and more often, would keep them closer to their original condition for longer, and in theory reduce the load running through a player’s arm over the course of a long match.
One of the most vocal current backers is Taylor Fritz. The American, a fixture in the world’s top ten, has complained publicly that balls fluff up almost immediately and slow down far too early, arguing bluntly that “seven and nine is just too much.” Fritz has also tied his own wrist trouble to the merry-go-round of different balls used from week to week, saying he dealt with three different balls across three tournaments during a single US hard-court stretch.
He is far from alone. The grievance has been building for years. Djokovic, reflecting on how the sport has changed, has said the single biggest difference he notices compared with a decade or more ago is simply “the balls.” Alcaraz — currently sidelined by the wrist injury he sustained at April’s Barcelona Open — called for reform in an interview early last year, insisting: “It needs to change. I know they will change it.” The Spaniard described how a new ball moves quickly before ballooning in size after only a few exchanges, making aggressive play difficult.
The women’s tour has echoed the concern. Raducanu, who underwent surgery on both wrists in 2023, told The Guardian last October that the balls represent a genuine challenge for the whole locker room, noting that “it gets very fluffy” as they deteriorate and connecting that wear to the rise in wrist, elbow and shoulder injuries across the game. Medvedev has likewise flagged the balls as a factor behind the injury trend.
Whether a Challenger-level trial can move the needle at the top of the sport is another question. The results in Lexington are expected to determine whether the idea is worth expanding to the main ATP Tour, and there are practical hurdles. More frequent changes mean significantly more balls per match, which would likely force a renegotiation of the tours’ supply contracts with manufacturers such as Dunlop and Penn, who would have to provide far more product to get through a tournament.
Crucially, the trial addresses only half of the complaint. Players have long argued that the deeper problem is not simply how fast balls degrade, but the sheer variety of balls in use — a different brand and specification, it can feel, almost every week — leaving them constantly re-adapting. Faster changes do nothing to standardise which ball is being hit in the first place.
Still, the move has been welcomed as a start. Tennis Channel analyst Gill Gross endorsed the plan, predicting the change “should happen and will happen.” For a tour often accused of moving slowly on player welfare, even a modest, low-profile experiment on the Challenger circuit represents a rare instance of the game testing a fix rather than merely debating one. With the North American hard-court swing looming, it has put the ball question firmly back in the conversation.
