Category: Tennis Racquet Stringing

There is no question that natural gut tennis string is the best overall tennis string for most tennis players.

It holds tension remarkably well and over a very long period of time; this makes it a great value. It is a natural fiber taken from animals, therefore it more closely matches the materials in the human shoulder and elbow than nylons and polyesters mixed in a vat and extruded in a lab; this makes natural gut a safer and healthier choice for most athletes. And finally, because it has more elasticity than virtually all polyesters, it offers players who need it a lot more power and playability than artificial strings.

The downside to natural gut, many players will tell you, is the price. While it may offer health benefits and environmental benefits (it is organic animal tissue), these benefits are not free. On average, natural gut costs two to three times more per racquet with than with multifilament. So for frequent string breakers, stringing with natural gut can get to be quite expensive.

Our experience at Racquet Network is that most tennis players at the beginner and intermediate levels are satisfied with natural gut. The customers who are least satisfied with gut are men under 40 who like to pound the ball, especially on their serves. While these players probably should not be pounding serves (the harder they hit, the more they miss), they tend to do it anyway. More importantly, they like to do it. In fact, they consider pounding serves and ground strokes to be an important part of their game.

Pounders, whether on the serve or from the baseline, go through string of all kinds a lot faster than placers (players who place the ball, rather than pound it). And the lower their skill level, the faster pounders go through string.

This pattern of frequent string breakage is often a function of unnecessary power coupled with inconsistency. While more advanced players hit the ball in the center of the string bed on more than 80% of their shots, intermediate players hit the center of their racquet only about half of the time. When intermediate pounders hit off center, it means that the strings along the grommet line are being subjected to an extremely high amount of force and are more likely to break.

This combination of wasted power and off-center ball strikes makes natural gut seem like an expensive choice for intermediate pounders. Players is this category tend to believe that they are better off with polyester strings than natural gut because they perceive breakage as their most important problem. The question is whether or not this is actually the case.

Poly strings are durable. There is no question about that. A 16 gauge polyester string may last some players for years. Unfortunately, there is a downside to this durability that most players don’t realize. First, polyester strings lose power very quickly, even if the racquet is sitting in your bag doing nothing; this means that you need to restring every three or four weeks, even when you are not playing. Second, poly string is a lot stronger than most of the tissues in your shoulder and elbow; therefore if you subject both to equal amounts of stress, it is your body that will break, not the string. Finally, there are environmental costs to consider because polyester molecules take thousands of years to break down and be reabsorbed by nature.

So while polyester strings may seem to offer a better value than organic strings, the trade offs have to be considered before that can actually be determined. Is it smart to use polyester string so that you can pound serves that end up going wide anyway? Is it smart to use a string that helps your serve but kills your volleys and ground strokes? Is it smart to choose a polyester string that will likely go dead before you have a chance to use it again?

As any good coach will tell you, things are not always what they seem. Broken strings could be a sign that you need stronger strings or they could be a symptom of weakness in your strokes. Before you allow a broken string to knee jerk you into using strings created for professional players maybe you should consider all of the factors at play. You should also be aware of the fact that many of the pros who use poly only use it once before re-stringing their racquets and they almost never have to pay for it.

As professional stringers, we spend several hours each week fixing problems created by amateurs. Most of the time, these errors are minor and can be fixed relatively quickly. Sometimes, however, the mistakes are fatal to life of the racquet and sometimes, sadly, the racquet breaks or cracks before we can fix it.

With this in mind, we offer the following advice to customers who want to save a few bucks using an amateur stringer or who simply want to be loyal to their club stringer. At the very least, we encourage you to avoid stingers who do the following three things.

1. NEVER STRING OVER MAX TENSION

We see this all the time with badminton racquets. Players are told to string racquets at 30 lbs. even though the frame has a maximum tension of 28 lbs. written right on it. Badminton club stringers are especially bad for this. They tend to over-tension everything. The problem is that when you over-tension a new racquet, the racquet’s warranty is instantly voided. So one bad stroke and you are out $300.

Club stingers know this. They know that one hard smash is all it takes to snap an over-tensioned frame. And they are also prepared to sell you a new one when it happens. As a matter of policy, our stringing experts won’t over-tension racquets, especially badminton racquets. That way, if something does go wrong, we can back the customer up and ensure that their racquet can be replaced under warranty.

2. NEVER OVER-TENSION PLAYABLE STRING

This is another common mistake we see from amateur stringers. They take very expensive and very playable string and tension all of the playability out of it. Since the whole point of spending money on a playable string is to experience its superior playability, it makes no sense to crank the tension up to maximum and end up with a string bed that’s stiff as a board.

In a lot of cases, amateur stringers don’t really have a choice. They bought a cheap stringer on e-Bay so they could make a few bucks on the side. Do they know how to use it? Not really. Is the machine capable of precise tensioning? Not really. So they crank every racquet out at the same tension regardless. Whether or not the tension is right for the string is irrelevant. They are getting paid for stringing racquets and that’s all that really matters.

3. NEVER STRING RACQUETS YOUR MACHINE WAS NOT DESIGNED TO STRING

Racquets have changed a lot in the past 10 years. Stringing machines have changed a lot, too. In fact, there are many racquets today that simply cannot be strung on cheap stringing machines. Every time you string an advanced racquet on an outdated machine, you run some risks. The best case scenario is that you risk doing the job poorly. The worst case scenario: micro-cracks that translate into broken frames at some point down the road.

At Racquet Network, racquet stringing is not a sideline. It’s not something we are doing on the side. We are professionals with professional tools. We are up-to-date on the latest technology in both racquets and string. We have manufacturer specifications for all of the latest racquets. And as members of the Yonex stringing team, we take pride in our work.

While we cannot in good conscience recommend that you take your racquet to be strung by an amateur, we hope that the points above have at least made you aware of some of things to watch out for.

You see them everywhere, little signs cable-tied to tennis court fences or pinned to bulletin boards offering dirt cheap stringing. You see them on Craig’s List, Kijiji and a thousand other websites.

But can you trust them? Can somebody stringing racquets in their basement really do as good a job as a professional stringer? And do you get your money’s worth?

The answer is: possibly. If the stringer is properly trained, credibly certified and has a suitable stringing machine, he may be able to do a professional job. However, the truth is that people who string out of their basements are rarely trained or certified and rarely have suitable stringing machines.

In fact, most people stringing out of their basements are discount stringers willing to cut every corner in order to maximize their income while charging customers the lowest possible price. As a result, quality is not their highest priority.

LOW BUDGET STRINGING MACHINES

While it is possible to buy a tool marketed as a “stringing machine” for a little as $300, it is not possible to get a professional stringing machine for much less than a thousand dollars. In actual fact, the starting price for a professional stringing machine with all of the attachments and accessories required to do a range of racquets and strings is about $3000. Anything less and you will be buying a tool that can do some racquets, but not all racquets, some strings, but not all strings.

This is where most discount stringers cut their first corner. They buy a cheap machine or an old machine that is not capable of safely or effectively stringing modern racquets and then use it anyway. It doesn’t matter to them that stringing new racquets on outdated machines is often like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. It doesn’t matter to them that they may damage their customer’s frame. Maintaining a low price is their only concern and an outdated machine helps them do exactly that.

CHEATING TO SAVE TIME

As anyone who has ever used a cheap stringing machine can tell you, they are often painful to use. Compared to the computerized precision and speed of professional stringing machines, table-top and drop-weight tension machines are extremely slow and embarrassingly imprecise. In fact, they are so hard to use that it will often take an hour or two just to do a bad string job. So in order to save time, stringers who use them will often cut corners by tensioning only one side of the racquet. This turns a bad string job into a terrible string job.

Professional machines, by contrast, are extremely precise and efficient. They allow tensioning down to one-tenth of a pound and they have rotating turntables which make it easy for the stringer to properly tension every string without damaging it. This allows professional stringers to focus on quality rather than corner-cutting.

NO PARTS IN STOCK

Another area where discount stringers cut corners is in the parts department. In general, they have none. Most carry only string and tend to offer very little in the way of selection. While a professional stringer will replace a split grommet or advise you to replace a damaged bumper guard, discount stringers will tell you (falsely) that these part don’t matter. The truth is, these parts do matter. They are installed in racquets for a reason. When they are damaged, they should be replaced. And if they can’t be replaced, the racquet should be replaced.

So keep all of this in mind the next time you see one of these discount stringer signs cable-tied to the gate of your local tennis court. Racquet stringing is like everything else in life; you get what you pay for. If somebody offers to sell you a diamond ring for ten cents, chances are you will get a ring that isn’t worth a dime.