World Record of the Fastest Tennis Ball Hit

Tennis has been known as a game of inches, kings, game of lifetime…. It is incredible even today with its outstanding players, known with their incredible shots. Novak Djokovic is famous for his crazy shots from baseline to the edge of opponents service boxes. One of the fastest shots was 130 MPs fast against Roger Federer. Although there is a world record of the fastest tennis ball hit, which is 163.4 mph(263kph). This record was made by Sam Groth during an ATP Challenger event in South Korea.

History of tennis dates back to the 12th century. Historians believe that tennis originated in Ancient Egypt. There are some beliefs that the word ‘racket’ is coming from the Arabic word ‘racket’ which means ‘palm’. Tennis was developing for 9 years. Each year they were adding new rules, tools...The first-ever racket was made in 1874 in London by Walter C.WIngfield. Strings were made by sheep's outer skin - serosa. Gradualy tennis had been spreading all over the world and the specialists had been looking for a better quality of tension on their rackets. Existing rackets were not sufficient for the proffesionals any more. They were deteriorating rapidly, and equipments’ so frequent repairing caused discomfort and expense. After some experiments strings’ material had changed. 

They started using cow’s/bull’s gut. One racket need three cows although they were using six sheep . Today natural guts cost too much, so they are mostly bought by professional players. In the 1970's tennis was known as the royal game. Why royal because rackets were too expensive so only high-class group of people were able to play. Even though the quality of rackets imroved (cow’s gut was better than sheep’s skin), players were still complaining about the rackets. They need more durable ones. So scientists started to produce or implement rackets with chemicals and metallic materials. So they added new synthetic strings. Synthetic strings were made out of the mixture of polyester, kevlar, zyex, ventran, polyurethane, or nylon. Synthetic strings have increased strength, durability and mass.

In 1980 the racket-producers started an experiment, to find connection between phisycs and the tennis. It was not too hard for them to see the interaction between ball and strings by Newton’s. One of the experiments were solved by Newton’s 3rd law ( in every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). So whenever a player serves the ball with the racket's net, the ball, as the opposite reaction hits back to, they act upon each other. When the racket hit the ball, this hit created a kinetic force between the ball and the racket net and this kinetic force pushed the ball from the racket. Kinetic energy is the energy that makes object move.If we want to make object move or speed up/accelerate we have to force it.To force object move we need to act on the object.After we act on it energy is transferred to the object and it moves.This transmitted energy is called kinetic force .

Having a strong hit depends on the compression of ball.To have a strong shot you have to hit a dead spot. Dead spot is located on the top of the racket. This creates a more strong and straight serve against an opponent. I don’t know If you noticed but whenever an opponent hits back the served ball goes slower. All this is because of compression. When the player defends a strike from the opponent/whenever the ball hits the racketball loses 30% of its energy/speed.

This is happening because when ball hits net ,net transfers all its energy to the body so there is not that much force left to net so net pushes ball back with what force net will have. The loss of energy depends on compression too. All this means that the faster ball hits the racket it ball is compressed more so it loses even more energy. Although when the ball hits the wall it loses 45% of its energy/speed.So what is wanted to say is that strings keep the ball's energy/speed better than the ball hitting the wall.

Today every professional player has their own racket makers because they don’t really buy some other brand’s rackets if they are not sponsoring them. As sources have a minimum take 5 rackets every game. These Were are facing really good plays by Nadal, Federer, Djokovich… All this is because of strings. All normal racket strings are made by My these string players can show really good serve shots and very beautiful matches. All I wanted to say is that every improvement in Rackets will make matches better. Although there are some strings that are made out of some chemicals and they are cheap.

As I mentioned every improvement makes matches even more beautiful.Although every improvement makes accessories more and more expensive. It won’t be expensive for top players but what about beginners. If these beginners will not have as good a racket as his/her opponent it will make it easier to win. So, In my opinion, this will cause big changes in matches. In my opinion, They should make the rule that will say that they are not to allow to use this or that, so it makes matches and opponents rackets more balanced.

Tennis got known in 1970’s and has changed the world.From the beginging it was made for high class people although, after World War II it was available fro middle class aslo.In tennis technology improvement has brought lots for players.Switching from gut to synthetic materials has casused dropping price which is great deal for people.In addition, switching the racket from wood to aluminium also greatly shifted the cost of tennis and continued to attract more tennis players.It is really intresting what are these years going to bring