Do You Remember You First Racquet?

I am sure posters here were puchased a racquet from their parents hoping for a new Borg, McEnroe, Agassi, Sampras, Federer, Nadal or Henman would be discovered.

Question do you remember your first racquet?

I know mine was a Dunlop Maxply Fort. Can't remember the tension or weight.

My current racquet is a Babolat Aeropro Drive. 300g. 100sq and tension is 62lbs.

Borg's Donnay
then McEnroe's Dunlop 200G
Lendl's ugly grey racquet...can't even remember the brand.
Kennex
Volkv
a whole range of Wilson
and now moving to second hand heads bought on ebay to ease my tennis elbow.

Thinking of moving to Nalby or Wawarnka's Yonnex. Ugly racquet but so comfy to play with.

My hitting partner swears by Yonnex. He has an old Yonnex with a 90sq head and he still produces the occasional straight sets victory over me

I was tempted of moving to the Babolat Drive Pro. Some of the Wilson range appeals to me.

What could be an interesting subject is how the racquet influences style and game of play.

Agassi for instance could not have developed his tennis with wooden small frame racquet.

Over the many years of playing tennis I notice how youngsters make the best of new material too, exactly like the pros...without necessarily copying them. The Babolats (and strings) has created a generation of heavy topspinners who can indeed bring anything back on the court with ease. It's clear that the reason is that it's much easier to do so with a babolat than with most other racquets....and because they do not have much precision, like a Wilson would have, there is no point trying for risky shots.

And that applies to all racquets...they have design which facilitate shots over others.

It is a interesting discussion Tenez.

Agassi played with a much bigger head size. I think his Head racquet is 107sq!! He grew up with wooden racquets. I think his change to the Head racquets in the late 90's could be attributed to his latter successes.

Sampras for example used a Wilson racquet, but Babolat strings. On the seniors tour he uses a Babolat pure drive.

Certainly strings technology has made the biggest impact. Synthetic strongs are much more durable now compared to natural gut. Kevlar has had such a massive impact now. For example with the RPM Blast which Nadal uses gives him such ridiculous control, it is frightening. I still like the Hurricane strings. The Luxilon strings tend to work better with the Wilson racquets. I like Wilson racquets and they favour the attack minded player.

A company called Mantis has come into the market apparently run by an ex-pro who they don't disclose. Their strings are synthetic and claim to be similar to natural gut. A friend of mine has some samples and I am hoping to take bash with them.

What happens is with those dead strings the ball is in effect propulsed by the stiffness of the frame, whereas with the natural strings the ball is in propulsed essentially by the elasticity of the strings. The feeling is very different and a swing of the racquet becomes a very powerful shot with luxilon type. But the main difference is of course the gripping of teh ball. That's the problem with natural strings cause they can generate pace effortlessly if well timed thx to elasticity of the strings but if you want to put security in the shot (spin) then it's terrible...in comparison with luxilon.

And that has changed tennis so much. In the past to pull a winner with natural strings when in the trameline, you had to hit the perfect flat shot...nowadays being unbalace 2 meter in the trameline is not a disadvantage....but an advantage as it provides more angle to pass or even unbalance in turn the opponent....as long as you have the legs and the abs to get there..and whack the ball.

That's what has killed the talent side of teh game.

There is natural gut still out there and from what I gather Federer still uses it and you cannot beat the pop sound it makes off the racquet. I think the balance on the beam of the racquets has made more of an impact now because it increase the reliability of the groundstroke and the chances of drawing out an error from the opponent is much smaller now.

However I am more of the belief that the conds have killed the game because I believe that anyone with natural gut on their racquets can win a Slam. It is just that they are not as durable and no longer designed to with stand 25 stroke rallies.

legendkillar wrote:
However I am more of the belief that the conds have killed the game because I believe that anyone with natural gut on their racquets can win a Slam. It is just that they are not as durable and no longer designed to with stand 25 stroke rallies.

Having half the racquet with natural string is not at all the same as having 100% natural. In fact it amplifies the griping (spin) of the ball, if anything.

It's not true that anyone can win a slam with natural strings nowadays. If you look at the dynamic of a rally, it's almost entirely down to the synth strings. And this has more influence than the balls or the pace of the courts (within the variations available on the tour).

Players using heavy topspin would lose easily 20 if not 30% power and spin on their shots with natural strings...and that woudl be a killer for them. Remember, the advantage of natural strings is it's elasticity, meaning a well timed flat shot has power without much effort. But as soon as you topspin the ball is not gripped as much and the elasticity of the string is not used much as the ball is brushed instead and doesn't make the most of teh elasticity of the strings.

I have played with natural strings for 20 years and moved to luxilon 5 years ago....it's like day and light.

I am pretty sure (99%in fact) after having seen the match between Llodra and Murray that Llodra would have won had Murray used natural strings.

Tenez wrote:

legendkillar wrote:
However I am more of the belief that the conds have killed the game because I believe that anyone with natural gut on their racquets can win a Slam. It is just that they are not as durable and no longer designed to with stand 25 stroke rallies.

Having half the racquet with natural string is not at all the same as having 100% natural. In fact it amplifies the griping (spin) of the ball, if anything.

It's not true that anyone can win a slam with natural strings nowadays. If you look at the dynamic of a rally, it's almost entirely down to the synth strings. And this has more influence than the balls or the pace of the courts (within the variations available on the tour).

Players using heavy topspin would lose easily 20 if not 30% power and spin on their shots with natural strings...and that woudl be a killer for them. Remember, the advantage of natural strings is it's elasticity, meaning a well timed flat shot has power without much effort. But as soon as you topspin the ball is not gripped as much and the elasticity of the string is not used much as the ball is brushed instead and doesn't make the most of teh elasticity of the strings.

I have played with natural strings for 20 years and moved to luxilon 5 years ago....it's like day and light.

They can, RF has. The issue at hand is the conds. If they reverted back to the conds 15 years ago, you would see players out there with natural gut strings. The conds favour the synthetic strings because they are built to last during lung busting rallies.

Interesting viewpoint on the Murray/Llodra match. I think if Murray had natural strings, he would've S&V for sure.

Oh yeah and which one did Nadal win with natural strings?

Tenez wrote:Oh yeah and which one did Nadal win with natural strings?

Juniors?

legendkillar wrote:Interesting viewpoint on the Murray/Llodra match. I think if Murray had natural strings, he would've S&V for sure.

Murray's passing woudl not be dipping in Llodra's feet and that woudl make a huge difference for Llodra.

Another factor is that the new strings (thanks to spin) make all shots much more secure, and therefore helps engage in rallies (phyiscal battle). With natural strings you almost have no choice but risk for winners.

legendkillar wrote:

Tenez wrote:Oh yeah and which one did Nadal win with natural strings?

Juniors?

I don't think he even won Junior slams....Gasquet was ripping them right and left.

Tenez from memory Rafa basically bypassed the juniors once beating Pat Cash in an exhibition match in Majorca when still only 15 as a last minute replacement for an injured Boris Becker.

Once Cash had swallowed his pride got on the phone and instructed an agent friend to try and sign him up!

You have to wonder how well Nadal's game would fare if he used Natural Gut, but again it all depends what strings he was brought up using as it could well be he used Natural Gut and he a switch to Synthetic may have developed his game even more.

My first racquet was given to me by my mum who literally found it on the ground on her way to work.

It was a wooden Dunlop and I was beside myself when she gave it to me. I was 19 and thought I could win Wimbledon!

It was a blue wooden racquet, I think some variant of Kennex Pro, I can't remember but there was a "K" on it somewhere. It's still at my parent's house sticking out of a wicker washing basket with all our other ancient racquets - the next was a Head metal framed racquet that looked a bit like Jimmy Connors' racquet save that his was shiny and mine was matt (I think mine was aluminium).

noleisthebest wrote:My first racquet was given to me by my mum who literally found it on the ground on her way to work.

It was a wooden Dunlop and I was beside myself when she gave it to me. I was 19 and thought I could win Wimbledon!

I still think I can

newballs wrote:Tenez from memory Rafa basically bypassed the juniors once beating Pat Cash in an exhibition match in Majorca when still only 15 as a last minute replacement for an injured Boris Becker.

Once Cash had swallowed his pride got on the phone and instructed an agent friend to try and sign him up!

Yes I remember bypassing most of the juniors slams...which I find strange really. I think Toni was very cautious about exposing his game. He wanted to take the tour by surprise. Nadal's success is in grand part due to the fact that no-one on tour is used to hitting a ball like Nadal's. There is no way to train against that cause only him generates that kind of power and spin.

Once the players get used to it, Nadal is kind of doomed. The only thing is it's impossible to get used to it because the rest of the tour plays differently.

I still have my first and only tennis racquet. Its a wilson and I bought one for myself some years back. Its very rarely used. As a child I never got to play such games. My school never encouraged sports a lot. Only racquet sport experience was with badminton, with my sister in the nearby park or street in front of the my house, without even a net.

Now my work allows me to only play table tennis.

raiders_of_the_lost_ark wrote:Now my work allows me to only play table tennis.

That could be the reason you have a good understanding of tennis.

Having played TT at a decent level it has given me a pretty good understanding of racquet sport. Especially since I went throug the multiple rubbers yuo can put on the bat and their multiple spinning properties, the glue giving extra power and finally the bigger pingpong balls used 13 years ago or so to slow down the game and make it more watchable for the spectators.

ALl those changes are roughly affected tennis too. Funnily enough even TT is affected by doping, in fact they have more cases it than Tennis....strangely enough,.

I think mine was either a wooden Slazenger Challenge or a metal pseudo Wilson T-2000 rip-off by some company in Taiwan probably.
Can't remember which came first. I do remember violently whacking the metal one out of shape after my brother came back from 5-1 down in the third to beat me. It still played though! I was about 10 or 11 at the time.

What sticks in my craw is the octagonal strings. All these "victories" should be asterisked.

Looking back at wooden racquets, it occurred to me that a good exhibition game would be to play a match like a "gun game" shoot em up.
You begin the match with a Henry VIII "real" racquet and then every couple of games progress through wooden, metal, graphite, alloy (and all the ball & string variations).
Then we'd really see who has the most talent.

A wooden Yoneyama, natural gut, 7-inch round. It was a bear to play with when the grass was wet. And yes, there was such a racquet made that came from Japan in the 60s.

I was heartbroken when it broke.

PS: BTW, the current Yonex 'YY' logo is 'YoneYama'.

legendkillar wrote:

noleisthebest wrote:My first racquet was given to me by my mum who literally found it on the ground on her way to work.

It was a wooden Dunlop and I was beside myself when she gave it to me. I was 19 and thought I could win Wimbledon!

I still think I can

Me too, mixed doubles though

First racquet that I remember using is the Head TI Heat, with the weird support-strut looking thing across the shaft of the racquet. Used it in most of junior LTA tournaments, and successfully choked away many a match that I should have won with it!

Now I've done the anti-Djokovic, transferring across to Wilson and am using Feliciano Lopez's current racquet (well, what his current racquet is painted to look like anyway). Offers a nice balance of power and control, although I can't really enter the string discussion I see you guys have had above since I generally go for the bog-standard ones to save money.