Video: How tennis balls are made

It’s a tough life if you’re a tennis ball: you’re thwacked around for a bit before being unceremoniously chucked into a bin, lost forever under a bush, lobbed to a drooling dog or sent as an insult to King Henry V. We take the luminous green creatures for granted, but how many of us actually know how they’re made?

Well, Tennis Talent is here to shed some light – courtesy of this mesmerising video from Benedict Redgrove, who charted the manufacture of Wilson’s special US Open balls. Beginning life as pastry-like sheets of rubber, the balls are rolled, squashed, shaped, cut and glued by a mixture of workers and machines before the distinctive green fur is applied by lightning-quick hands. If watching the surprisingly labour-intensive process in action doesn’t get you fishing under hedges to apologise to long-lost balls, nothing will…

About Max Figgett

Max is a writer for Tennis Talent and the owner of a pretty decent forehand, if he says so himself.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *