‘You’ve just started a war’: Iga Swiatek wades into row over US Open balls

“Oh, my God,” said Iga Swiatek, smiling, during a press conference at the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati. A question had struck a nerve and for a split second she deliberated between whether to speak or hold her tongue. She chose to respond with full force.

The topic was, on the surface, mundane: whether she liked the Wilson US Open tennis balls. But it was loaded with subtext. The US Open is the only grand slam tournament that provides different balls for the men’s and women’s players. While the men use Wilson’s US Open extra duty balls, women use Wilson US Open regular duty balls which are enveloped by a thinner and less fluffy felt cover, leading to a faster, more aerodynamic ball, and consternation among some players.

“I think those balls are horrible,” Swiatek said, bluntly. “Especially after three games of really hard playing, they are getting more and more light. At the end, you can’t even serve 170 kilometres per hour because you know it’s going to fly like crazy. Yeah, I think they are pretty bad. Sorry.”

Among her long list of issues with the balls, Swiatek argued that they lead to increased errors and a less impressive product: “Right now we play powerful, and we kind of can’t loosen up our hands with these balls. I know that there are many players who complain, and many of them are top 10. We make more mistakes, for sure. So I don’t think that’s really nice to watch.”

As she departed the press conference room, Swiatek turned to her audience and smiled sheepishly: “You’ve just started a war.”

Her parting words were prescient as this has become one of the dominant subjects in the build up to this year’s US Open, underlining a perceived double standard between men’s and women’s tennis. A public debate