Tennis ball finder

390 products from 30 brands, 144 matched to the ITF's own 2026 list. Every ball carries eight axes, an overall index and a cost per playing hour. Nothing about a tennis ball is published per model — so where no reviewer has spoken, the value is derived from the ball's construction class and marked with a dagger. Balls in the same class come out identical and say so, rather than being given invented differences. Every column heading opens an explainer — click one.

How this reads

Start here

Every heading on this page is a button. Click , , or to see what the number is, how this page arrives at it, and what it cannot tell you.

The three provenances

A cell with a † is derived from construction class — pressurised or not, felt weave, ITF type. A row with a rev chip has at least one axis taken from a named reviewer's words, with the quote behind it. A twin est. chip means another ball derived to exactly the same numbers; that is honest duplication, not a bug. Estimates cap at 9 — a 10 has to be earned on court.

Overall index

The mean of the six merit axes: felt life, stays lively, stays light, arm friendliness, spin grip, consistency. Speed and bounce are deliberately excluded — a fast ball is not a better ball, it is a different one, and which you want depends on your court. Blank axes are skipped, never counted as zero.

€ per hour

Price per ball over its lifespan, as a band. Where a reviewer published hours, the band is theirs. Otherwise it is a class estimate and the band runs a factor of two either way — a guess should not look as precise as a measurement. 388 of 390 balls carry one; the 2 that do not say why in the cell.

Fit

A match, not a judgement: whether the ball belongs on your court and in your use. It never says a ball is better. Only 66 of 390 products print a court designation, so a ball that does not state one is capped at 9 and told you so — absence of information is not a perfect match.

Two axes are permanently blank

Spin grip: nothing published anywhere relates ball construction to spin — the research treats strings as the variable. Consistency: can-to-can variation needs sampling across production lots. A blank cell is the honest output of a model with no input.

Colour, and why it decides approval

ITF Rule 3: a ball "shall be white or yellow". So a pink, black, blue or purple ball cannot be ITF approved at all — 7 products in here claim it anyway, and carry a claim vs rule 3 chip. An unmarked ball is the standard optic yellow. And a line called "Code Black" is not a black ball: that is the tin. Colour is only ever set from a source describing the felt.

Licence balls

German state associations (BTV, HTV, WTV) licence an existing ball and print their logo on the felt. Those rows say who actually makes it, and where the maker's own record is on the bench the licence row is linked to it and inherits its ITF status — it is the same object.

This bench needs JavaScript. All 390 balls, their eight axes, the court fit and the cost per playing hour are computed in your browser from one data set — there is no server to ask, and nothing is sent anywhere. With scripting off the list above stays empty. The method behind every number is in How this reads, which does not need scripting, and the racket and string finder works the same way.