IIf you’ve been watching the U.S. Open on ESPN over the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed the graphic on the right side of the screen, just above the sideline of Arthur Ashe Stadium: A digital stamp praising tennis as “The Healthiest Sport in the World.”

That’s a pretty in-your-face claim to make during the highest-profile, most-watched sporting event in the United States. During the Super Bowl, for example, I don’t recall football ever promoting itself on TV as “the world’s most exciting sport” or anything like that (“the world’s healthiest” certainly doesn’t work for football). Or an ad slamming broccoli or beets as “the world’s healthiest food.”

Very brave. And effective: With the slogan engraved in my mind, I took it upon myself to play tennis balls with a friend for an hour last weekend. And sure enough, I felt pretty strong afterwards.

But tennis really , The healthiest sport in the world? Who says so?

I did some research. The short answer is: it could be. But if it isn’t—and it’s very possible it isn’t—the false message being broadcast every hour during the US Open counts as a victimless violation.

And it can improve public health.

Because while nearly all sports offer benefits for the body and mind, not to mention common sense, a whole body of research suggests that the health effects of tennis are particularly strong. People experience a range of positive outcomes from tennis, including improved cardiovascular and bone health, better agility and coordination, and overall happiness.

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As for tennis’s alleged status as the world’s healthiest sport, “I generally agree,” says Amy Chan Hyung Kim, an associate professor in the department of sports management at Florida State University and co-author of a 2022 study extolling the societal benefits of tennis. She points to Kim’s work to support her claim, citing the United States Tennis Association (USTA), which created a “healthiest in the world” marketing campaign (neither the USTA nor ESPN has disclosed whether the USTA pays the network for in-match digital ad space). While Kim doesn’t “completely” agree with the USTA’s claim, she does think it’s important to consider the stress and burnout that tennis can cause at the most elite levels, as well as the overuse injuries that weekend warriors can suffer.

The USTA may want to ask Rafael Nadal, who has torn his ACL, has tennis elbow or has battled pain and injury throughout his career, had hip surgery last year and has an abdominal problem in 2024, and missed three of the four majors this season, whether tennis is the healthiest sport in the world.

According to Dr. Brian Hainline, USTA’s chairman of the board and president through 2023, two specific studies gave him the confidence to sign the slogan. The first, British Journal of Sports Medicine In 2016, in more than 80,000 British adults, participation in racket sports such as tennis, badminton or squash was found to reduce the risk of dying from any cause during the study period by 47% and the risk of death from cardiovascular causes by 56%. Compared with all other activities studied – cycling, swimming, running, football, aerobics – racket sports were most strongly associated with a lower risk of death.

A study later published in the journal in 2018 Mayo Clinic Procedures Among more than 8,500 adults from Copenhagen who were followed for about 25 years, playing tennis was found to be associated with an increase in life expectancy of about ten years compared with those who had a sedentary lifestyle. The other sports examined — badminton (6.2 years), soccer (4.7), cycling (3.7), swimming (3.4), running (3.2), gymnastics (3.1) and health club activities such as treadmills and elliptical machines (1.5) — lagged behind tennis.

Dr. James O’Keefe, director of preventive cardiology at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a co-author of the paper, says tennis is “very defensible from a scientific standpoint” as “the healthiest sport in the world.” Mayo Clinic Procedures study. “Tennis has better data than any other sport to make this claim. So it’s not bullshit.”

“When you put it all together, when you add every possible element of eye-hand coordination, agility, balance, aerobic, anaerobic, psychological and physiological elements, it really becomes hard to argue against the game of tennis,” says Jack Groppel, former chairman of the USTA’s national sports science committee.

OK, OK. We can debate all day long about the subjective health benefits of tennis over other sports. But that doesn’t change one important caveat: Both studies to make a case for tennis, not Each sports on the planet have been evaluated. So how can tennis be claimed as legitimate? , The healthiest sport in the world?

Hainline acknowledges this shortcoming. “As a scientist, my motto would be, ‘Tennis has been shown to extend your life more than any other sport that’s been studied,’” says Hainline, a neurologist who served as chief medical officer for the NCAA for more than a decade. But you can’t squeeze that poppy slogan onto a television screen. Hainline is comfortable with the marketing of “the healthiest sport in the world,” he says, “because I think there’s some truth to it. As a scientist, if I were in charge of marketing, we’d probably be marketing almost nothing. It would be one asterisk after another.”

Two sports may have a particular problem with the USTA. But what about squash, which is grouped under the “racquet sports” umbrella with tennis and badminton? British Journal of Sports Medicine One study found that these activities reduced the risk of death, but they were not studied in conjunction with tennis. Mayo Clinic Procedures Who’s to say that squash doesn’t provide the life-extending benefits of racket sports, or that it doesn’t offer more benefits than tennis?

Another sport that has at least one strike against tennis is basketball, and it was missing from both studies. And I’m not just talking about basketball as someone who plays almost every week (okay, I kind of am). Mayo Clinic Procedures The study points to the social benefits of sports in particular: Games we play with or against other people, such as tennis, badminton and football, are associated with longer life spans than activities that are undoubtedly good for your heart but are inherently solitary pursuits (cycling, swimming, running, calisthenics and gym workouts).

“Social support is the No. 1 predictor of most health outcomes, including life expectancy,” says O’Keefe, a co-author of the study. Weekend warrior basketball is incredibly social, with face-to-face and group conversations providing a big part of the fun. If being happy helps you live longer, basketball has to be in the “healthiest” mix.

Hainline agrees. “As for your question about basketball, I would take the challenge and say, you know, we market based on what we have,” he says. “On the other hand, the one thing you’ll never hear me do is just promote tennis.”

While Hainline says he will press aggressively to market tennis’s health benefits regardless of the competition, pickleball’s meteoric rise has given the claim more urgency. Across the country, the two sports have jockeyed for space, with pickleball often winning. “Pickleball is a challenge for us,” Hainline says. “Where pickleball has really hurt tennis is the infrastructure. It’s probably taken up over a billion dollars’ worth of courts.”

And according to the scientist who helped show tennis is king, pickleball could soon compete with tennis for the status of “healthiest sport.” If the sport, which wasn’t really a player when both studies were published years ago, were included in a similar analysis today, “I have no doubt that pickleball would be like tennis,” O’Keefe says. “It would be like badminton. It would have six to 10 years more life expectancy, even taking everything else into account.” He bases this assessment on the social ties among the “thwack thwack” group.

“Racquet sports are fun for the dedicated players,” O’Keefe says, practicing what he preaches. He was looking forward to a game last night. “It’s going to be a gorgeous day in Kansas City, 78 degrees and sunny,” he said. “It’s perfect. You can’t do this and not come back happy, relaxed and ready to sleep. It makes you love life.”

He was going to play pickleball.