As this year’s Wimbledon Championships gets under way this week, the luminous yellow which glows from the tennis balls is a familiar sight to those on and off the court.
While lawn tennis dates to the 1870s, the use of yellow tennis balls was only brought in by the International Tennis Federation 100 years later in the 70s – after an idea by none other than broadcaster and wildlife expert Sir David Attenborough.
Previously, tennis balls were white or black depending on the colour of the tennis court. But after the revolution of colour television, the balls were changed so that viewers could see them better on colour television screens.
According to the 2018 book 2,024 QI Facts To Stop You In Your Tracks by John Lloyd, James Harkin and Anne Miller, the switch from white tennis balls to yellow was the idea of Sir David when he was the controller of BBC Two.
Sir David previously spoke about how he ended up using Wimbledon to ensure the rollout of colour television across the UK.
He told the Radio Times in 2017: “I was controller of BBC Two in 1967 and had the job of introducing colour.
“We had been asking the Government over and over again and they wouldn’t allow us, until suddenly they said, ‘Yes, OK, you can have it, and what’s more you’re going to have it in nine months’ time.’
“I mean, a ridiculously short period… the cameras were changing, the engineers didn’t want to buy a complete set of studio cameras that would be significantly outdated within a year.
“So I had to predict when we would start – and, in a childish sort of way, I wanted to be first.”
He added that he was not able to launch the entire service in colour, it had to be done gradually first with something in colour every night.
“It suddenly dawned on me that the one thing we did have was outside broadcast units. I thought, ‘Blimey, couldn’t we deploy them?’
“And then I thought of Wimbledon. I mean, it is a wonderful plot: you’ve got drama, you’ve got everything. And it’s a national event, it’s got everything going for it.”
According to the International Tennis Federation, in 1972 it introduced yellow tennis balls into the rules of tennis after research had shown these balls to be more visible to television viewers.
The yellow balls are now used widely across the sport by competitive and by non-competitive players alike.
