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0 pointsALittleLight4y ago0 comments

I'm not really familiar with tennis aside from playing a couple games in high school gym, seeing a game or two on TV, and reading an essay from David Foster Wallace.

My approach would be to take what I assume the properties of felt are in terms of how they relate to a tennis game and assume that those properties are selected for. So, felt is probably a little cushion, giving the ball a little more durability as it gets whacked by rackets or off the ground. The felt provides grip, without which, a tennis ball may bounce off the ground in ways that are impossible to return. The color of the felt makes the ball easier to see (though of course you could color a nude call too).

Something like that.

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JohnBooty4y ago

My response to you is nearly identical to what I told a sibling commenter. Some of those things are right and some of them are wrong, but far more importantly I really like your thought process.

I don't want to give "real" answer/answers, in case anybody else is having fun speculating!

But I will also say that the "real" answer/answers are somewhat debatable. In the sense of: the players utilize the properties of the felt in particular ways. So, are the balls fuzzy because the players utilize those properties, or do the players utilize those properties because the balls are fuzzy? (Which came first, the chicken or the egg?) The answer itself is fuzzy, because the reality is that the ball and the players and the game have evolved steadily over ~100 years.

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