What do you think of this fact?
Picture a tennis ball. You see bright yellow, right? For most of tennis history, that picture would have been wrong.
Black, white, and badly lit
According to the International Tennis Federation (ITF), balls used to be either black or white, depending on the background color of the court. On a pale court you’d pick a dark ball, on a dark one a light ball. Simple logic for the people standing right next to the net.
Then color television arrived. In the late 1960s, more and more people watched tennis at home, and TV producers were looking for ways to make the sport look better on screen. A small white ball zipping across a screen was not exactly easy to follow.
The rule change that came from TV
In 1972, the ITF added yellow balls to the rules of tennis. Its reason was refreshingly honest: research had shown that these balls were more visible to television viewers. So the color you now see on every public court in the world was chosen for people on the sofa, not for the players.
One famous name is tied to the story. David Attenborough, yes, the nature documentary legend, worked at the BBC in the 1960s while it was switching to color. According to the All England Club, he was one of the people who inspired the move to yellow balls. In 2024, at 98, he sat in the Royal Box on Centre Court on the first day of Wimbledon.
Wimbledon took its time
Here’s the twist: the most famous tournament of all was in no hurry. Wimbledon kept using the traditional white ball for 14 more years and only adopted yellow balls in 1986. Its own compendium for that year says the white balls were getting stained green on the grass, which also made them hard to see on TV.
Bonus fact: According to the ITF, the allowed diameter of a standard tennis ball is 6.54 to 6.86 cm, a range that last changed in 1966.
So the most recognizable color in sports was picked for the camera, not the court.