Care for a game of tennis?
David Attenborough certainly does.
Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. You might love today’s fact, perhaps even 15, 30, or 40 times.
Sir David Attenborough is the reason tennis balls are yellow.
At some point in your life, you’ve certainly heard the soothing voice of Sir David Attenborough.
This man has been a presenter for EIGHT DECADES. He’s narrated the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet, The Life Collection, and countless other series. He’s also the only person to have won BAFTA Awards for his work in black-and-white, color, high-definition, 3D, and 4K resolution. He is exactly five weeks away from turning 100 years old.
In fact, I’m getting worked up covering all these impressive accolades. Let’s take a quick breather.
In the late 1960s, two things were happening. One was that color television had been invented. The other was that more people were interested in tennis.
Back then, tennis balls were either white or black. Until a blossoming TV exec for the BBC realized something: white tennis balls were kind of hard to see on Wimbledon’s grass court. Viewers were getting lost in the action.
That executive was David Attenborough. He proposed the solution of coloring the tennis balls, so they’d pop more easily on television. The International Tennis Foundation agreed, and they set out finding the best color that would be visible on all different colors of courts.
They eventually settled on what’s officially called “optic yellow.” Here’s the hex color for it in case you want to design something with this specific shade.
The optic yellow balls were officially introduced in 1972, and fans everywhere delighted in being able to see what was going on.
Curiously, Wimbledon, the inspiration for the color change in the first place, didn’t change to optic yellow until 1986. Spokespeople for the grandiose event said that the white balls were turning green after frolicking in the grass, so they finally acquiesced and allowed people who can’t attend courtside to still enjoy some tennis.
Side note, in college, I attended the Sony Ericsson Open one year for a class. My story was on the ballkids that fetch the balls when a player hits it into the net or erratically out of bounds.
In between matches and practice sessions, players are just wandering around the area, which feels a bit like Disneyland, only if every single attraction were related to tennis. I saw James Blake finishing up a session and thought it was the perfect time to ask a question that I had always wondered about:
A tennis player usually gets two or three balls tossed to them, and they’ll keep one while returning the others. Why is that?
If Blake thought it was a stupid question, he certainly didn’t show it, which I appreciated. Instead, he told me that he’s looking for balls with a minimal amount of fuzz on them, since they’re more aerodynamic and can move faster on serves.
Less fuzz is also good if you happen to be house-training a puppy who likes chewing on tennis balls. They tend to rip the entirety of the fuzz (which is technically called “the nap,” how quirky) off the ball, leaving a weird grayish brown lump behind.
Anyway, if you ever want to play a game of tennis, you just let me know. Maybe we’ll even be lucky enough to have a legendary voice like Sir David Attenborough calling the game.
Thanks for this, Joey. I had a ball!