John Branch

Fans at the US Open stand a good chance of not catching a single glimpse of Roger Federer or Serena Williams. It may be impossible to miss the jumbo balls.

At tournaments around the world, oversized tennis balls are the must-have souvenir, especially for the pre-teenage set with regular-size Sharpies and jumbo-walleted parents. New Yorkers have a special affinity for them. It is likely that more jumbo balls will be sold during the Open than at any other tournament in the world. A boisterous crowd, apparently, is best armed with an in-your-face ball.

?It?s a much better seller at the US Open than it is at the Australian,? said Chris Kushner, Global Manager for tennis balls at Wilson Sporting Goods, the official ball supplier at the Open. Wilson saves its biggest balls for New York: 11 inches in diameter, two inches bigger than the usual ?jumbo? ball sold at other Wilson-sponsored tournaments. Thousands are gobbled up, by autograph seekers, mostly, but also dog lovers and those who cannot resist the temptation of purchasing anything deemed jumbo, particularly when covered in bright, fuzzy material.

It is unclear who had the initial idea of creating an oversized tennis ball, pricing it proportionately to its size ($40 at the Open this year) and aiming it at the pre-teenage demographic. But it was a stroke of marketing genius.

Wilson has been selling the balls at the Open since 1992, Kushner said, and sales have increased each year. Wilson expects to sell as many as 8,000 jumbo balls at this year?s tournament. All the top-level tennis ball suppliers have versions of oversized balls, sold mostly at tournaments where they provide regulation-size balls for competition.

Actually, it is worth millions, although Kushner declined to be more specific than to say that the company sold ?tens of thousands? of jumbo balls each year. ?It?s part of our business that?s growing,? Kushner said. ?It?s not a huge part of our business, but it?s something that?s kind of fun and gives us a lot of good PR at the events. At the tournament, every single kid that walks in there wants a jumbo ball. They get attracted to them. It?s like a magnet.? Other companies have their own synonyms for big. At the French Open, Dunlop?s ?giant balls? of yellow, orange or turquoise are available. Penn and Head, part of the same company that supplies balls to tournaments around the world, call theirs ?giant balls,? too. At Wimbledon, Slazenger sells a ?midi ball? in yellow or pink.

Before tennis balls, the trend toward oversize concession items seemed to stop with the giant foam No 1 fingers. Thankfully, no one has dared make an authentic-feeling golf ball the size of a beach ball, or had much success in marketing it. But bigger is better in tennis, apparently. That is a serendipitous byproduct of the tennis ball itself. It is small, light and fuzzy. And making jumbo balls is relatively simple. The same factories in China, Taiwan and Thailand that produce Wilson?s regulation-size tennis balls create the jumbo ones, too. ?But they?re not made the same way,? Kushner said, adding with a laugh, ?We don?t have giant machinery for them.?

The jumbo balls are akin to soccer balls and basketballs, with a thin inflatable membrane that makes them light and bouncy. Then they are covered with felt. They are shipped deflated ? not in a vacuum-sealed, three-pack cylinder that goes wooosh when opened.

That is why one of the busiest jobs at the Open, besides running the cash register where jumbo balls are sold, is that of jumbo-ball inflater.