At the Mubadala DC Open this year, Taylor Fritz was asked whether he’s ever surprised by the quality of balls when he’s at home practicing and opens a new case. He began, “Yes, it happens a lot,” and then dragged in Dunlop and Wilson quickly, asking: “What’s the point of practicing for a tournament?” Now, since then, the issue has kept cropping up and that’s what prompted Fritz to go on what he called a “massive tennis ball rant“.

The rant came on Thursday, five days after Fritz, the No. 9 seed, was eliminated in the third round of the US Open by Argentina’s Francisco Cerúndolo. He’d just come off Washington, Cincinnati, and a full week of pre-tournament practice in New York, so he knew exactly how the tournament-issue Wilson balls should feel: “I have no complaints about what we played with at those tournaments this summer,” he wrote.

But the problem started once he got home. “My last two days of practice with Wilson US Open balls have been miserable,” he said, adding that the cans are “sold, marketed, and labeled as the same balls” as the tour equivalent, but they come off his racket like a completely different product. He also identified a pattern behind it all.

“The amount of effort I have to use to produce a regular rally ball” is what stood out most, he wrote, saying he’s had to “throw my whole body into shots and swing out of my shoes” just to get normal pace. “Beyond being frustrating, it feels like it’s creating bad habits,” he added.

And this isn’t isolated to Wilson: Fritz says he’s noticed “such a significant difference between retail balls from Wilson and Dunlop” and their tournament counterparts over the past year and a half, calling it a difference big enough that “it completely changes how you want to construct points and take risks on shots.” To rule out a fluke, he added, “I’ve tried balls from multiple cases to rule out a bad batch”. Same result every time.

Now, Fritz has been making a version of this argument for years. In 2023, he backed fellow pros Zizou Bergs and Stan Wawrinka after developing wrist issues he tied to using three different balls in three weeks during that year’s US Open series.

Jessica Pegula didn’t hold back either during the Mubadala DC Open conference. “I felt like this year it’s been better, again, because we’ve stuck to at least the Dunlop ball where it’s been the same. I think every year around this time I do feel like there’s a dropoff a bit with the Wilson quality,” she said.

Pegula added that there were many such factors that the players tried to narrow down through the players’ council in an effort to understand why the balls felt different, especially since the pandemic.

Wilson’s official position is that its retail “US Open” balls and the ones used in the actual tournament are made to the same specifications. But when NPR asked Wilson, Dunlop, Penn, and Slazenger directly about consistency complaints back in 2024, all of them declined to comment. More recently, tennis journalist Amy Lundy Dahl said she reached out to Dunlop about this roughly ten months before this year’s Australian Open. While Dunlop initially agreed to answer questions, they eventually went silent.

Taylor Fritz Is Not Using the Tennis Balls as an Excuse for His Early US Open Loss

One of the key points of Fritz’s rant is that the American was quite satisfied with the Wilson balls used at the US Open. That is why he has been quite clear that his rant is not his justification for having an early exit in New York.

“Also anyone that is trying to tie this into my loss or say I’m making an excuse for any loss, please seek help,” said Fritz on X. “I’m sorry to tell you that you are in fact illiterate. As I said before I really liked the tournament balls and this rant is me wishing I also had them when I come home to train after the tournament.”

Fritz had a great start on the North American hard courts, as he won his first title of 2026 in Washington against Rafael Jodar in the final. The American had an early exit in Montreal, but reached the quarterfinals in Cincinnati, where he lost to Brandon Nakashima.

With a US Open men’s draw that did not have Jannik Sinner and had a returning Carlos Alcaraz, Fritz was tipped by many experts to make a deep run in New York. The 2024 runner-up began his campaign strongly, winning his first two rounds against Darwin Blanch and Mattia Bellucci in straight sets.

However, Fritz’s campaign came to a premature end in the third round, where he lost to Francisco Cerundolo in five sets. The American was two sets up against the Argentinian, but his ever-reliable serve broke down in the latter stages of the match, resulting in his earliest US Open exit since 2022.