Up until the 1970s, white and black tennis balls were the norm. These days, manufacturers meet stringent criteria set by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) for producing tennis balls, including weight, size, rebound, deformation, and color. However, it wasn’t too long before John Heathcote, a British sportsman, introduced a two-piece flannel cover sewn over the top for perhaps the closest resemblance to the modern tennis ball. The first rubber balls were rudimentary and delivered inconsistent performance. In some cases, the stomach of a goat or sheep would have formed the core of a ball, which, although surprising to many, isn’t a far cry from the cow intestine still used to create natural gut tennis strings today.Īs the sport began to mature in the 1870s with the introduction of Lawn Tennis and equipment sold by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, so did tennis balls, which transitioned to rubber. Some of the oldest tennis balls used to play the earliest forms of the sport were crafted by hand with everyday materials, including leather and wool, wrapped together and tied with rope.
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