Modern tennis balls must conform to certain size, weight, deformation, and bounce criteria to be approved for regulation play.

A tennis ball generally has 12 pounds per square inch (80 kPa; 0.8 atm) more of a nitrogen and oxygen mixture than the sea level ambient air pressure.

[7] The felt delays flow separation in the boundary layer which reduces aerodynamic drag and gives the ball better flight properties.

[12] The ITF's "Play and Stay" campaign aims to increase tennis participation worldwide by improving how starter players are introduced to the game.

The ITF recommends a progression that focuses on a range of slower balls and smaller court sizes to introduce the game to adults and children effectively.

[13] In 1480, Louis XI of France forbade the filling of tennis balls with chalk, sand, sawdust, or earth, and stated that they were to be made of good leather, well-stuffed with wool.

[14] Other early tennis balls were made by Scottish craftsmen from a wool-wrapped stomach of a sheep or goat and tied with rope.

Those recovered from the hammer-beam roof of Westminster Hall during a period of restoration in the 1920s were found to have been manufactured from a combination of putty and human hair and were dated to the reign of Henry VIII.

Originally, tennis ball manufacturing was done by cutting vulcanized rubber sheets into a shape similar to that of a three-leaf clover.

In 1926, the Pennsylvania Rubber Company released a hermetically sealed pressurized metal tube that held three balls with a churchkey to open the top.

Each year approximately 325 million balls are produced, which contributes roughly 20,000 tonnes (22,000 short tons) of waste in the form of rubber that is not easily biodegradable.

Balls from The Championships, Wimbledon are now recycled to provide field homes for the nationally threatened Eurasian harvest mouse.