Why are the tennis balls yellow and not green or red?


Why are the tennis balls yellow and not green or red?

Players playing with green and red tennis balls

Tennis Balls are available in the market in many colors. Yellow, Green, White, Red, Orange, and this list goes on and on. But the most widely used tennis balls used by professional players are yellow. Or are they green? Let’s find out.

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There was a Twitter poll in which the participants were asked to respond to whether the tennis ball was of green color, yellow, or any other color. 52% of nearly 30,000 participants responded that tennis balls are green. About 42% went for yellow while 6% said that they are of another color. But how accurate are these statistics?

When Roger Federer was asked what the color of tennis balls actually are, he said “yellow”. However, there is more than one color of tennis balls available in the market and they all are used in different stages of a player’s life.

The yellow color tennis balls are used in professional matches. The Grand Slams use Optic yellow pressurized tennis balls. But both the green tennis balls and the red tennis balls have their own uses. Both tennis balls are used to train when a player is young.

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The Red tennis balls are used to train boys and girls who are between the ages of 4 to 8 years. They are large as compared to green or yellow tennis balls. Also, they have a soft foam covering so that the kids do not have to worry about getting hurt. They are often used for playing on smaller courts. One can use them to play mini-tennis.

The orange tennis balls are also used for training children between 8 to 10 years of age. The green tennis balls are used to train children above 11 years old. The green tennis balls are very much the same as compared to yellow balls which are used in major tournaments and professional tennis. However, the green balls are slow as compared to the yellow ones.

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Which tennis balls to play with?

Tennis balls in different colors (Image Credit: Youtube-USTA Florida Go Pro Tip)
Tennis balls in different colors (Image Credit: Youtube-USTA Florida Go Pro Tip)

This means that all the best players who have dazzled on the great stage of professional tennis must have come across all kinds of balls-red, yellow, green, orange, etc. It is not hard to imagine that tennis superstars such as Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, and even youngsters like Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Rune, started training under their respective coaches with either red, green, or yellow tennis balls.

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The yellow tennis balls and 27-29 inches tennis racquets are as close as one can get to professional tennis players. Green tennis balls can be used if one has just started training. But one day or the other, if one wants to become a professional tennis player, then he or she has to begin playing with yellow tennis balls. The red tennis balls can be used if the kid has just started training and is learning to lift the tennis racquet properly.

But if one is a novice and just wants to enjoy the game on a Sunday afternoon, the color of the tennis ball does not matter much. However, if the person wants to play tennis like his or her idols, then he or she must buy yellow or green tennis balls.

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