Dunlop

Heritage

The Dunlop name comes from John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish veterinary surgeon working in Belfast, who developed a practical pneumatic tyre for his son's tricycle in October 1887. In 1889 he and Harvey du Cros, president of the Irish Cyclists' Association, set up a company to exploit the patent. Dunlop withdrew from the business in 1895, and the tyre company that carried his name was largely du Cros's creation.

The rubber company moved into sporting goods in 1910, making rubber golf balls at its Birmingham base, and introduced the Maxfli golf ball in 1922. Tennis balls followed in 1924, and in 1925 Dunlop bought F.A. Davis, which brought tennis racket making skills into the business. In 1928 the sports operation became a subsidiary, Dunlop Sports, and moved its headquarters from Birmingham to Waltham Abbey in Essex.

Dunlop acquired the Slazenger group in 1959 and introduced the Flying D logo in 1960, a mark still used today. Through the 1970s the company was slow to move away from wooden rackets, but in 1980 it launched the Max 200G, described as the first mass-produced carbon composite racket and made by injection moulding. John McEnroe and Steffi Graf both used it heavily.

Ownership changed several times. The sports businesses were merged as Dunlop Slazenger in 1984, BTR bought Dunlop Holdings in 1986, Cinven bought Dunlop Slazenger in 1996 and moved production to the Philippines, and Sports Direct (now Frasers Group) bought it in 2004 for £40 million.

In December 2016 Sports Direct agreed to sell the Dunlop brand to Sumitomo Rubber Industries for £112 million, and the sale completed in 2017. Under SRI the brand has concentrated on racket sports: tennis, squash, padel and badminton, alongside the golf brands in the wider group.

Padel came into the picture through balls. According to a 2019 Spanish trade report, Dunlop developed the first padel-specific ball more than 20 years earlier, working with the Spanish Padel Federation. Its current padel balls include the Pro Padel, aimed at competition and approved by the International Padel Federation (FIP), and the Team Padel for club and training use, plus the Fort Padel.

Dunlop also built a padel racket range and a team of players on the World Padel Tour. In January 2018 the Argentine Ramiro Moyano, then ranked 22 on the World Padel Tour, signed with Dunlop to play the Gravity racket, joining a roster that already included Juani Mieres and Patty Llaguno.

Tour partnerships have grown since the SRI takeover. Dunlop became the official ball of the Australian Open and of the ATP Tour from 2019, and in November 2023 the ATP extended the partnership through 2028, adding official racket and tennis accessories status. From January 2021 Dunlop became the LTA's official tennis and padel equipment partner, covering padel bats, balls and luggage.

Today the padel range covers the FX series (FX Pro, FX Lite, FX Hybrid, FX Team, FX Start and FX JR), the Galactica series, including a 2026 limited edition designed with the Hamburg artist Nisse, the Aerostar, Nanomax, Megamax and Tristorm series, and the Fort and Pro balls. The FX rackets use Sonic Core with Infinergy by BASF, VibroShield and Force Bridge. Dunlop's 2026 news covers padel players such as Teresa Navarro, who won four FIP titles in the season, and Amiee Gibson, who won two FIP titles.