Tennis players have strange rituals. Whether it’s lining up water bottles or the number of bounces before a serve, every player has a ritual that they live by.

At the Qatar Open, Australian tennis player Christopher O’Connell was seen rubbing the string on his racquet with balls he had brought onto the court. After he finished conditioning the strings, he put the balls back in his racquet.

It’s not clear what O’Connell was trying to do. Maybe, he wasn’t happy with the string tension on his racquet. Or the logo paint on the strings was still too wet.

That certainly was a strange ritual but it’s not the first time it’s been done on the court. Retired Spanish player Ana Medina Garrigues did during her playing years but she used the balls that were going to be used for play.

Ben Shelton wasn’t joking when he said his girlfriend Anna Hall is a better athlete than him. Hall scored the second-highest-ever pentathlon score of 5004 points at the USATF indoors.

Like Ben Shelton, Anna Hall was an athlete at the University of Florida. In 2022, she won the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. In 2022, she also won the bronze medal at the World Athletics Championships.

Ben Shelton reached the quarterfinals at the 2023 Australian Open, which was only his second grand slam. With his dream run in Melbourne, he moved into the Top 50 in world rankings.