Why are tennis balls yellow? Sir David Attenborough may be the reason

One of the most anticipated games in the world after cricket and football is the tennis. People hardly ever blink while the players are in court. Tennis has been one of the most-watched games across the globe even when colour television wasn’t popularized.

People wearing white clothes and hitting on a white ball was all that one could notice when during the early stages of black and white television, and people were happy to catch a glimpse of that. Interestingly, if you notice, the colour of the ball is also mentioned as white. However, this statement, to some might feel contradictory, since today’s tennis balls are a vibrant yellow in colour. Then what changed?

How did tennis balls get its yellow colour?

The answer to how the tennis ball changed its colour from white to yellow lies in the unison of the arrival of and broadcasting in coloured television, the growing popularity of the sport and Sir David Attenborough. As Sir David Attenborough turned 100 recently this year, fans all over the world recounted global changes that he had been a part of during his lifetime, and this is one of them.

Upon the arrival of colour television and cameras, Attenborough, who used to then work in the television, sent the crew to cover the Wimbledon Match in 1967. However, it became difficult to gauge the white balls in the white background of the tennis court. This posed a problem for the viewers while watching the sport on TV. As a result, Attenborough made the suggestion that the colour of the tennis ball should be changed so that one can make out the shots more clearly.

The International Tennis Federation paid heed to this suggestion and started a process of trial and error to find out which colour ball is suitable for television viewing. After this, it was settled that the tennis balls would have a change of colour from white to fluorescent yellow. Fluorescent yellow made it easier to follow the path of the ball against the white court lines. And thus, in the 1973 during the US Open, the players played the game with a yellow ball for the first time. Ironically, Wimbledon was the last to adopt this colour change in 1986 despite being the reason the change was suggested in the first place.

Today, tennis is no longer played with a white ball and yellow is the standard colour.

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