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Clare Richardson

Stringing

For rapid, price competitive racket stringing, club member Bob Dent has been many members' chosen supplier for many years. Contact Bob on 07919 071875.

A few thoughts to consider from Bob Dent

As a few of you are aware, I do some stringing for club members. Recently a couple of events have indicated that some basic information could be useful.

Two players had their racquets re-strung - one had broken a string, the second had not. Both encountered problems on playing with the re-strings. They had trouble controlling the ball and a tendency to over hit. Each player had become used to having to work the racquet that much harder, even though they had a powerful racquet. Both racquets still had the manufacturers' original string in place and the strings had gone dead. The re-strings meant that the racquet and strings now acted in unison.

All man made strings lose tension - some more quickly than others. They also lose their elasticity (i.e. the ability to stretch and return to the original state). It is this that generates the power and levels of control and feel.

In a perfect world the string would break before we got to the point of a “dead” string. Sadly, this doesn’t happen that often and breakage is very much dependent on your style of play. I rarely break strings, and when I do it is normally a mis-hit. Yes, surprisingly I do admit to mis-hitting the ball!

As a rule of thumb, if you play once a week your racquet should be restrung at least once a year. The more frequently you play, the more often it should be restrung, not waiting until a string is broken.

The exception to this rule, because as we all know, “No Rule Is a Rule without an Exception”, is natural gut. As with synthetic strings, it will also suffer from loss of tension to start with, but will then hold its tension until it breaks. Sadly, this comes at a price - purchasing a set of Babolat VS championship gut in a shop will currently cost £30:00. This doesn’t include the cost of the re-string.

Happy playing, and remember that a comfortable grip is equally as important to playing well.