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Tracking stringbed stiffness

I find that serious tennis players are beginning to realize the importance of a racquet’s stringbed stiffness. As Crawford Lindsey noted in the February 2005 RSI, there are two problems with establishing a universal stringbed standard: The cost of an instrument to measure stringbed stiffness, and difficulty stringing an unfamiliar racquet with an unfamiliar string to hit a target stringbed stiffness.

The cost issue is not so bad, as there are now stringbed testing instruments on the market that cost less than a high-end racquet. As for the second issue, we don’t have a problem with it in our operation. We keep a log on each string job we perform. This log includes make, model, and condition of the frame. Also in the log we list the string manufacturer, string gauge, string length, string type, the stringing machine used, the reference tension, and finally the stringbed stiffness, which we measure immediately after each string job. For our own records, we note the frame dimensions before the racquet is loaded in the stringing machine and after the job is completed.

Once the customer specifies a stringbed stiffness, we can consult our log and arrive at an approach that yields results within a point or two of the customer’s desired stringbed stiffness. Our string jobs are guaranteed to please the customer. We probably have less than 1 percent come back. Other shops should be able to do the same!

5 sets of Prince Premier with SoftFlex 16 to:

Dr. Carl Love, Albany, OR

From the January 2006 issue
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