Whenever I sling tennis balls they never fly well, as opposed to rocks, which fly great and feel nice and heavy in the pouch.

To me, tennis balls feel too light, and I'm nowhere near as accurate with them as I am with rocks.

Anyone else have this experience? And does anyone have advice for throwing tennis balls?

Yes. Rocks are superior. But you can't throw rocks safely in a park.  But we all have the same trouble. A lighter sling seems to help me with tennis balls when I first started using them.

For tennis balls, a suggestion I've seen is to get a hypodermic and inject water into the tennis ball til you like the weight

Good idea, reminds me of a video I saw, I think from Jesus Vega. He drilled a hole into a rubber ball and poured sand through it to increase its weight.

Though would that be tournament-legal if you processed the balls like that?

I would say it'd
1 - depend on the tournament rules etc (is equipment modification allowed)
2 - not hidden or done underhandedly
3 - ideally the tournament referees would be the ones to modify, or at least check/inspect the modifications - are they all modified, are there different classes, etc and are all the modified items done in the same way? I.e. - water injected tennis balls, are they all one brand, all within .1 gram of the measure-mark weight, are any holes sealed the same way (if applicable) and so on.

A light and very flexible sling does wonders for tennis balls ( and frankly, for stones too.) 2-3 mm in diameter round braided cords (you can find these in cotton if you want them natural), and a 2mm thin flexible leather aussie pouch, for example. I have given the traditional
thicker and flatter slings so much experimentation because of the popularity, I really tried to understand why and thought of all kinds of reasons, after all, if so many use them, there had to be some reasons. But in the end they all end up in the basket of slings that I never use. I tried all kinds of 'inbuilt' design elements to so called help the performance of the sling, but they all get ditched in the end, and I return to the extremely light and flexible pocket slings I have. I notice a fast improvement in my power and accuracy when going back to these slings that lack any real hard stiffness in the cords and pouch. To give an example, these pouches are so pliable that, when held balanced on your extended pointy finger, they fold/fall around it vertically downwards by itself.  The difference is like night and day between these and those that have stiffer pockets and heavy release lines. My prevailing preference for Greek and Figure 8 probably plays a role in this but so far even Balearic style seem to work well now with these thin and light slings when I don't use my wrist as much during the prerotation.

Great, thanks for sharing that. I use jute to make my slings, it's a pretty light fibre as far as I can tell, though I'm not sure how it compares to something like cotton for density.

I've made a few heavier slings from thicker jute and a few lighter ones, I'll have to test a heavy vs a light sling to see if the lighter works better with tennis balls.

For competition use an unmodified tennis ball must be used, this is for safety reasons. Competitions of pelota (ball) are held in town squares with a light net to catch the balls so that it can be easily seen by passing spectators to promote the sport. Competitions of piedra (stone) are held in safer locations.

Right, I thought as much. Thanks for confirming  :)

Tennis balls are a different beast to stones since they are much much lighter for their size. This can lead to issues with the release cord fouling the shot or excessive spin causing wild curves in flight path. A lighter sling with a very clean releasing pouch is recommended, if you use a heavier sling I would strongly recommend it is tapered otherwise the release cord will become a huge obstacle to push through. It is also important you release cleanly, I say from experience even with a lightweight sling you can put insane curves on the ball if you are careless with your release (such releases barely effect stones in comparison because of their much increased density).

You can do what I did unintentionally.  I also never liked slinging tennis balls.  One day I got some street hockey balls, and although didn't like them much at first either, I got used to them and thought they were better.  When I finally tried tennis balls again, they felt pretty good to sling.

So get some street hockey balls or something else that's worse (to sling) than a tennis ball.  Then tennis balls don't feel so bad.  ;D


Also +1 to the thought of trying a lighter sling.  Heavier braided slings (like braided paracord) will definitely work.  But the release needs to be very clean or the ball's path will get interfered with.  Which I'm sure you're experiencing.

Given I didn't know which tournament you were talking about, I gave feedback for a generic one, I defer to David's expertise in this.

For me, tennis balls have 3 advantages.
1) Security.
2) Visibility. It's easier to find a tennis ball than a stone in the middle of a field.
3) Ease of use. Outdoor and indoor (gymnasium, hangar and against a wall).

A good ball for practice. Just my experience. But the stone is better for a "real" shot and the feeling.

Thank you all for the replies, I will indeed try a lighter sling. Also might give hockey balls a try, thanks Joe for sharing that  :)

I'm planning on making a new tapered sling, haven't made one before so we'll see how that works out. Hopefully that'll solve the issue of the ball getting deflected by the release cord.

Maybe you’re all just using the wrong sling 🤷‍♂️ I have grown rather fond of shooting tennis balls.  It’s about the only ammo safe enough to sling with children running all over the yard, and if I had to travel to another location I would sling a lot less.

If you can learn to control a tennis ball, then rocks should be no problem, but going the other direction is much more difficult.

  Stones are superior to tennis balls in almost every way.  However, because they are more difficult to sling tennis balls are very useful for training.  To make a long story short, if you can learn to sling tennis balls accurately slinging stones accurately will become easier. 

I think of it as shooting airsoft (tennis ball) or live firearms (lethal ammo)

You can hunt paper targets either way, but after a while of airsoft, you want the real thing now and again

I've tried out a lighter sling, indeed that's helped a lot so thanks to you all for suggesting it. My new tapered sling's also throwing them pretty well.

Stones are definitely more satisfying though no doubt there. I just love how they fly, can't really achieve that same feeling with tennis balls  :(.

Tennis balls not satisfying?!
I think you might be doing something wrong.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CndIhvWKfee/?igshid=MDM4ZDc5MmU=

Good stuff there!

Yeah when I sling them they never really seem to fly far or fast. Maybe I'm just hopeless haha

    If you haven't tried them yet definitely give golf balls a try.  If you can get a good backspin on them they will fly surprisingly far.