This content emphasizes the critical, yet often overlooked, role of tennis racket strings in player performance and enjoyment, advocating for more frequent restringing and informed string selection based on individual needs and preferences.
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just kind of quickly about myself. Um,
so in my other life, I'm a stringer. Um,
so as as AJ was saying, so I'm I'm with
the GRSA, the Global Racket Stringers
Association. I'm a certified tour
stringer. Um, I'm also an instructor
with that organization with the US, uh,
racket stringers association. I'm a
master racketch. I'm also a
certification tester for them. Uh, a
play tester for tennis magazine, now
tennis.com. No more physical magazines
anymore. So, uh, done a bit of work over
the years too with some different
companies in terms of product
development, product validation, product
testing stuff, which has really been
fun. So, to sum that all up, racket
dork, string dork. So the title of the
pre presentations is don't get strung
along. Um mostly because I like dad
jokes. Uh but also because there's a lot
of uh maybe miss or bad information that
exists kind of in the equipment space
and the product space. Um so the goal
for us as coaches is really to help you
play better. So equipment selection is
going to be a big part of that frankly.
So, uh, I'm here today to hopefully help
arm you with some information so that
when you go back home and you go to your
stringers or if you're stringing for
yourself, um, you can maybe make some
informed decisions about what you want
to do next. And that's my my string
resume there. So, uh, most recently kind
of my main tournament and this is where
I got to meet Gary for the first time
was at Indian Wells. I've been stringing
uh, at that tournament since 2021
up until last year. I also did the ATB
event in Montreal last summer. Um this
summer I did the Challenger in Sumpter,
South Carolina. Uh and prior to that,
kind of what got me into the tournament
stringing universe was the Eddie Herur
tournaments down at IMG Academy in um
Bradenton, Florida. Uh did that for a
couple of years as well um with Prince.
So the first thing we want to start off
with is that's a pretty recognizable
face there, Coco Goff. Um a buddy of
mine was her stringer for this
tournament. Okay, so she won the singles
tournament. She made the doubles quarterfinal.
quarterfinal.
And my question to you all is how many
rackets did she string for that
tournament? Any guesses? >> 20
>> 20 >> 20
>> 20 >> 30
>> 30 >> 30
>> 30 >> 18.
>> 18.
>> How many? >> 80.
>> 80. >> 80.
>> 80.
>> Are you sure you want to go with that
high? Okay.
>> Anybody else? Any other guesses?
>> Three. Right. So this is this is why
Carla's the boss.
>> Oh my god.
>> That's pretty good.
>> She She's really good, too. If you ever
see those those containers of jelly beans,
beans,
she's great at that. All right, so 82
rackets strung,
right? So she had seven singles matches,
18 sets. I I counted all this stuff up
the other day. um four matches for
doubles, nine total sets. She also has
practice. And now something that's
really, really important is she prepared
her rackets to go three sets in each
match. So that's why we're going to see
again on this about a three per set
average. She didn't use all of them. But
point of the matter is, oops,
for one tournament, that's how many
rackets she done. Okay, she had done
>> that took how many frames?
>> Good question. That's pro that's maybe
eight to 12 would be my guess. Um,
typically when they're bringing them in,
we see them I think the most we've seen
is like eight at a time. Um, so here's
the next question.
How long will pros use a racket? You got
a couple hints there based on what Coco
does. Bless you. But what do we think?
Any guesses?
What do you think, Emily?
>> One set match.
>> One three- set match.
>> Seven games.
>> Six games. Seven games. We're getting close.
>> Can anybody tell me why it's nine games?
>> Very good. Ball change. Okay.
Okay.
So, there is an inverse relationship
between the speed of the ball and the
liveless of the strengths. When the
balls come out of the can at the very,
you know, when they're first being used,
they are at their fastest, right? As
they get played with, especially now,
they fluff up. They lose a little bit of
compression. So, they slow down
essentially. And what happens with the
strings? They start tight. As you play
with them, they start to loosen up a
little bit. So, now the ball is a little
slower, a little less lively. The
strings become a little bit more lively.
So again, that relationship is why pros
are typically switching every nine games.
games.
>> And how long frame
>> switching frames?
>> They usually change frames every season,
>> right? So they'll and they'll kind of
arguably go like about five seasons a
year. So I think Fed was getting like a
minimum of 60 rackets a year. He'd get
batches of 12,
right? So this is the main reason as we
were just saying there being the ability
to consistently control the ball is why
we're changing strings so frequently at
the pro level, right? And we're thinking
about ball control, we're thinking about
speed of shot, we're thinking about our accuracy,
accuracy,
and we're thinking about our spin. Okay,
so here's the next question. Thinking
about recreational players, how long are
we using a freshly strung racket?
>> Nine months.
>> Two years.
>> What else do we think?
>> All right. Ready for my very scientific answer?
>> How was that? Yeah. Right. So, too long.
Frankly, it's just too long. So, you are
all here investing in your games and
investing in playing better tennis, but
oftent times we're overlooking one of
your one of the most important tools,
right? As AJ said yesterday, right? It's
not necessarily the racket. The racket's
just the string holder. So, the strings
engine of your game.
So, when we think about why we're
stringing, we've got the consistency of
the playing experience, right? So, we're
thinking about what the pros are dealing
with when changing the strings out based
on the balls. Again, new balls come in,
I want a little bit more control out of
the strings, right? As the ball again
slows down, strings liven up. That
basically that relationship means my my
playing experience is going to be pretty
consistent. As soon as a new element
gets dropped in, brand new balls, okay,
that's about to change. I've got to
change the equipment to match that.
Okay. Um,
so and that's what we got up here,
right? So, basically, as soon as the
string is tensioned, regardless of
whether you hit a ball or not with it,
it's going to start to loosen up.
Typically, off the machine, strings are
going to lose about 10% of their dynamic
tension within the first 24 hours.
Again, that's not even hitting a tennis
ball. Over time, that starts to level
out, but they're still going to continue
to lose tension. Um, and again, which is
why we have to be pretty aware of when
we get our racket restrung. The second
piece is a little bit more about the
durability. So, a lot of the strings
that we're using these days have kind of
special coatings on them. Again, they're
very slick, so the strings move a little
bit better. That breaks down with wear,
especially if you're playing in gritty
conditions. So, the more you play with
strings like that, you're breaking down
the coating. you're starting to in in
excuse me, you're starting to increase
the friction between the strings and
then that's going to again not allow you
to have the best performance out of your
equipment. So reringing is big because
again we really want a more consistent
tension, more consistent string movement
and again interplay between the string
and the ball so we can make less
adjustments just to the equipment and we
can just work on adjusting to the
conditions to our opponent to the
strategies that we're trying to play.
So, moral of the story, rering more
often. Now, I know that's not a
reasonable request at times to say,
"Hey, I I'd like you to change rackets
every time you play with a new can of
balls." Right? That might be once once a
match. Um, for some of you it might be
reasonable, for some of you it might
not. But just again, be aware that if
you can stay on top of that, it's going
to ultimately be better for your game.
So why I'm here, what I'd like to share
with you, rering more often. And then
the second piece is starting to
understand what your options are when
you rering. So when we're thinking about
string selection, we've got some options
there. We've got the material, we've got
the construction, we've got the size of
the string, which we also call the
gauge, and we've got the tension. Those
are kind of the big bad boys.
And our goal is to find the balance of
playing characteristics to optimize your performance.
performance.
But that's only if you're a robot and
you don't perceive things and you don't
have opinions and you don't have likes
and dislikes. But the enjoyment of the
playing experience, I think, for
recreational players is incredibly
important. So, your perception of how
your equipment works for you, incredibly
important uh in in my eyes as a coach of
recreational players. Um, when we also
think about enjoyment of the playing
experience, what other ideas might you
have about that ide that concept? If
you're enjoying something, what is what
is your equipment probably not doing to you?
you?
>> It's probably not hurting you, right?
So, even if you don't necessarily love
the feel, as long as the equipment's
giving you a good performance and it's
not hurting you, it's not beating you
up, you're probably in good shape. I'm a
little bit picky. I like a particular
sensation when I'm playing. So, I'm
looking for something even a little bit
more specific. I think AJ is too. We
were chatting about our hybrid setups
the other day.
So, some of the challenges that we're
going to face, we've got our anecdotal
wisdom, right? That's always going to be
around there. We've got marketing, we've
got paid or biased reviews,
not enough uh objective information, and
not enough personal experience. So
again, part of the reason I'm here with
you all today is to help trying to share
some more objective information about
strings in particular.
The other challenge is you, no offense,
right? But everybody's different. So all
of your needs are going to be different
in terms of what you're choosing for for
your equipment. And if we're truly
fitting you well, we're taking all of
that into account
all the time, right? So very, very
rarely are we going to run into
situations where we've got players
again. So no and I are not using the
same racket. If we were using the same
racket, we're probably not using the
same string setup. We might customize it
a little bit differently, different grip
sizes. So there's going to be
preferences based on all of these things
here. I play up north, he plays down
south, right? He's mostly playing on
clay. I'm mostly playing on indoor
hardcourt. Again, it's going to be
completely different situation even if
we start with the same racket.
So here's another example of player
preferences. Anybody know these players?
Who we got up here?
>> Oh my goodness. I'm that's if that's the
first player you can pick out of those
two, I'm super impressed. Nancy, right?
Yiki Iikery, Norwegian doubles player, I
think of Finnish heritage, someone was
telling me, but plays for Norway. And
who's the uh the other player up there?
>> Manorino. Okay, what am I about to
reveal? Uh so I a couple years ago at
Indian Wells, I got to string for both
these players. Unfortunately, I didn't
get to string Manorino's lowest tension.
He went down to like 9.7 kilos. Um, but
I did get to string a couple rackets for
him. Uh, I is another story. So, she
wants uh as tight as the machine will
go, which means we had to add a
pre-stretch to that 88 pounds. She wants
it with two knots, meaning we've got to
use one length of string. Uh, with that
racket, it means you've got to do an
around the world pattern, which is a
little bit more challenging. Um, I use
safety glasses and every time I tension
the racket, I did one of these because I
wasn't sure when the thing was going to
explode. Um,
Manorino 22 pounds.
So, again, very very very different
likes. The physics of their games
probably relatively close, but very very
different uh likes in terms of how they
they choose to use their equipment.
So we've got to talk a little bit about
kind of that objective information we
mentioned before. So with our string
characteristics kind of these are kind
of the big the big primary bullet points
here. So we're looking at our power
level which is directly related to the
elasticity of the string.
We're looking at spin potential which is
partic uh potentially the shape of the
string or the coating on the string. the
durability slash slashtension
maintenance that's largely about the
material and the construction of the
string and then feel tends to be a
So when we're talking about power and
again all things being equal more
elastic strings will produce greater
ball velocity than stiffer strings.
Okay? And that simply comes down to
every time you hit a tennis ball,
there's going to be some loss of power
in the exchange between the ball and the
racket. A more elastic string is going
to lose less power at that exchange.
A uh a stiffer string is going to
actually lose a little bit more power
and actually a tighter string, a stiffer
string is going to have the ball
actually deform more than the strings.
And that's kind of what's interesting
about the polyester, the monofilaments.
At higher tensions, the ball is going to
bend more than the strings are going to bend.
When we're looking at tension,
basically, you go lower tension, it's
going to produce a softer string bed.
It's going to give you the perception of
more power, higher uh ball launch off
the string bed. It's also going to
basically uh spread out the shock of
impact. So instead of playing with a
tighter racket where you're going to
take that shock in a in a shorter window
of time by allowing the strings to bend
more, you're going to distribute that
shock over a longer period. It's going
to you're going to perceive it to be a
little bit softer. Okay. Very very
interesting. What you would see at
contact is you'd see a couple of
different things happen. You would see
the frame itself, right, actually
deform. That means that the there's
going to be a loss of uh energy when the
when the frame actually bends. You're
going to actually see the strings deform
and you're going to see the ball deform
quite a bit. Uh the ball almost like
turns to liquid. It's going to actually
wobble through the air so much. I'm
hoping my buddy
Adam Ford was about to do that for me.
So, here it is. So, we saw it at regular
speed, but here here it is at slow motion.
This is what happens every time you hit
>> And what tension
You So, you can see again the the the
racket bends. You saw the strings again
deform and then unload
>> the balls.
>> The ball deforms a lot. This is a big
surf. This is a big surf.
But again, then you can kind of see how
the ball kind of wobbles through the air
as it it goes back into shape.
So again, that again, like we said,
that's a big big serve. That's not an
incoming forehand or a backhand where
there's incoming energy or anything. Oh,
so 142 mph serve, right? Um, so every
time you hit a tennis ball, again,
there's there's a big energy exchange
going on there. So, how the racket and
strings work to create that situation
really important. So, um, a lot of
deformation basically, we're trying to
manage that with our stringing. So, spin
potential, this one's this one's a dicey
subject a lot of the time. Um, spin is
mostly coming from your swing. So, how
your swing loads the strings is going to
have the greatest outcome on string,
excuse me, on spin, not the string.
Okay? The string can help, but it's not
going to make it. Your swing has to make
the spin. Okay?
Here's where it gets interesting.
Strings with a higher string to ball
friction produce more spin, meaning the
string grabs the ball more, right? And
then also strings with lower stringtost
string friction, which means the strings
slide against each other very nicely
tend to produce more spin as well. Okay,
so here's the next video. So here's what
happens when you're hitting spin. And
again, that's a that's a monofilament
string. Can you play it again for me,
So you can see.
Yeah. So that's just the ball got fired
across the string bed like that. But
when we're swinging, we're actually
going to make that same effect happen.
>> Yeah. That string looks like a
monofilament to me. That's totally a
guess, but that's what it looks like. So
essentially what's going to happen is I
move my racket up the back of the ball.
The main strings are going to deform
down, right? They're going to kind of
make a smile. Then they're going to
shoot back up. that shooting by back up
action, then we call it snapback. That's
going to propel the back of the ball up.
That's what's going to make the ball
spin. Okay.
So, we've got kind of four main
construction types. We're looking at
monofilaments, which are commonly
referred to as polies. So, a poly is
it's more important to kind of identify
the construction than it is the material
in that case because everything else is
about construction of the string. So, a
monofilament means one filament, one
fiber. Okay, multifilament, multiple
fibers. Okay,
we've got a synthetic gut and a natural
gut. So, those are kind of our big four
categories. The big thing with
monofilament, it's mostly polyester
copolies. There are some other
monofilament materials as well. They're
just not as as prevalent in the marketplace.
marketplace.
This is an example of head string
compass. So, this is like their string
selector. I know it's a bit hard to see.
Um, I think this was on their Instagram
page at some point, but their compass is
again, you've got a power control axis
and then you've got a spin comfort axis.
Um, so the power and control I think is
that's the most important thing to for
us to look at. How much power is the
string going to bring to the table.
So, we're going to start to dive into
some of these things. So, a a
monoilament, typically one extruded
piece of string. It's kind of produced
like you're squeezing toothpaste out of
the tube. Um they can be rounded or
shaped and again material mostly
polymers co-olymers with some additives.
The big thing here with our playing
characteristics they are not as elastic
and they're lower powered. Because
they're lower powered it means you can
swing faster and the ball doesn't hit
the back fence as much as some of the
other strings. The other big advantage
with these strings is they are very
slick against themselves. So they slide
more. They've got low stringto-string
friction which helps with spin potential.
potential.
The issue is that their tension
maintenance is not great since it's one
fiber of string. So as they basically
take that the load of contact over and
over again and just the stress of
tension, they they will drop tension
after kind of a certain number of play.
I find kind of the 15 hour mark of play
is typically where they're not really
good anymore. Okay. Um the other issues
because they're not as elastic, you're
going to take on greater shock when you
hit a tennis ball with these strings. So
again, benefit,
a little bit more control because
there's lower power, little potential uh
little extra uh spin potential. Um but
poor tension, poorer tension
maintenance, and greater shock to the body,
body,
which actually, let me go back here. So
that means here when we're looking at
spin potential, how fast does your swing
need to be to actually benefit from
these strings?
What would you say? Is a slower swing
speed going to benefit from these strings?
strings? >> No.
>> No.
>> No. Because that slower swing speed is
not going to create enough of a bending
effect on the main strings to get what
we're trying to get out of them. Okay.
Um the other issue here is a slower
string speed is going to need more power
or less power typically.
probably need more, right? So, this
again very low powered string. So, a
slower swing speed is not going to
really benefit from this kind of string
that much.
Opposite end of the spectrum in terms of
power is your natural gut.
Intestine.
>> Noah definitely knows this.
>> Intestine. Yeah. Right. So, it's
intestine. Okay. So, very naturally
flexible fiber. Uh, it's round. There's
usually some kind of coating on there.
Uh, highly powered, pretty decent spin
potential because of the coating. Um,
this is the best tension maintenance out
of all of the strings up here. It holds
tension the best. It creeps the least.
Uh, and lesser shock. So, before uh pros
started playing with monofilaments, this
was the main string that the pros pros
were all using.
And here's the synthetic version of gut.
It's a multifilament, multiple fibers.
So that construction is trying to mirror
natural gut as closely as possible.
Okay. So again, similar playing characteristics,
characteristics,
uh, highly elastic, higher powered, some
spin potential. It depends on the
string, it depends on the coating. Okay.
Um, better tension maintenance and much
less shock. So slower swing speed, this
is going to be more appropriate. Natural
And finally, synthetic gut. This was
kind of the big string of like the the
80s and and 90s. This is starting to
kind of die away a little bit because
it's it's a great multi-purpose string.
Um, but unfortunately, it doesn't do
anything as well as the other strengths,
right? So, if I want more control and
more spin, I'm going to go monofilament.
If I want a little bit more comfort, I'm
going to go natural gut or I'm going to
go multifilament. So, this is going a
little bit the way of the dinosaur. Um, however,
however,
price point and the value on this string
tends to be very very good. So, if
you've again, if you're not super super
picky, um, not not a bad place to go. I
would go with a little higher end than
the standard synthetic gut. Um, it's
kind of go to a mid-tier. You can find a
So, when we're looking at how we
actually apply some of these some of
these ideas, the goal is to balance the
power of the string bed against the
power of your swing and the power of
your racket. So, what does your swing
bring to the table? What does your
racket bring to the table? I've got to
balance that out with how we put the
string and choose the string and string
the string.
My preference is that you all play with
the most elastic string setup that you
can control. It's typically going to
give you the most bang for your buck in
terms of your ability to use your
equipment well and it typically is going
to be the most friendly on your body.
When we're thinking elastic, again,
we're talking about more elastic
material and construction. We're
thinking about thinner gauges because
those tend to be more elastic than
thicker gauges of the same string and
lower tensions. We're thinking more like
And again, as we said, the spin
potential piece, uh, if you can't
benefit with your swing speed, typically
I recommend staying away from the
monofilament. It's just not going to
give you the playing characteristics
that you're looking for unless you're
using a really, really powerful racket
or a really, really soft and comfortable
racket. One of the few exceptions I
think is like a Wilson Clash or even
some of the new Yanx Ezones. They tend
to build in a little bit more dampening
technology. So those rackets tend to
make playing with a full poly a bit more comfortable.
