Tailor Made: Customizing your racquet

Tinkering with the specs on your racquet can turn a good stick into a great one. The pros do it, and so should you.
 
Odds are that the racquet you see Andy Roddick or Maria Sharapova using spent its early life in a cubbyhole in a nonde-script of? ce in Midtown Manhattan. It sat there for weeks—at that point just a frame, no handle—until Roman Prokes got the call for a resupply. Then he me-ticulously customized the racquet to the player’s demanding speci?cations.

For the pros, mass-produced frames won’t do. There’s too much variability. A gram too top-heavy and the racquet just won’t feel right. Pete Sampras used to complain that if too much ink was used to stencil the Wilson logo on his strings, he could feel the difference.

Prokes, owner of RPNY Tennis and a TENNIS advisor, likens himself to a tailor. “If you buy a suit off the rack, even if it ? ts well it’s not going to be perfect. The same thing goes for tennis racquets.

”While much of his business involves working with professionals—Prokes often travels with the tours as a stringer—he offers the same customization services to anyone. He’s been in the racquet business for 23 years, long enough to see equipment trends come and go, and he understands what might bene?t the average player. So before you buy a new racquet, it may be worth ?ne-tuning your old one.
 
FRAME WEIGHT
 
 
For some time, lightweight racquets were the rage on tour. But recently, as tennis of?cials have ?ddled with balls and surfaces to slow down the game, pros have compensated by adding weight to their frames. More weight equals more power. Most of today’s retail racquets weigh less than 300 grams, but pros’ racquets tend to weigh between 340 and 380 grams (ounces are not an exact enough measurement for the pros’ racquets).

According to Dave Holland, Prince’s senior category director, performance tennis, companies don’t mass produce heavy frames because the extra weight might be unwieldy, especially for juniors, their primary marketing target. “But I always recommend that players use the heaviest racquet that they can comfortably handle,” Holland says.

Your Turn >> Trying out demo racquets of varying weights or adding lead tape to your current model are the best ways to see if you improve with a heavier stick. In general, baseliners bene?t by adding weight to the racquet head to boost power and create a bigger sweet spot. If net-rushers want a heavier racquet without sacri?cing maneuverability, adding lead tape to the handle, under the grip, is the best option. Serious players who carry around several racquets might consider having them customized to the same speci?cations, given the variability of mass-produced retail models. “If someone has four of the same racquet, I guarantee they like one more than the others,” says David Bone, executive director of the U.S. Racquet Stringers Association and TENNIS technical advisor.
 
 
GRIP SIZE

During a recent Federer-Nadal battle, you may have heard the commentators note how both players use unusually small grips. The pros’ handles are customized to ? t their hands, and they use much more precise measurements than the 1/8-inch increments found in store models. Nadal’s grip is roughly 4 1/8 inches in circumference, a size most recreational male players stopped using in middle school. According to Prokes, the smaller-grip trend began with clay-court specialists such as Sergi Bruguera and Gustavo Kuerten. “A smaller grip is useful for open-stance forehands. You can use a lot of wrist and it helps create sharp angles,” Prokes says.

Your Turn >> If you think your grip may be too small, it’s easy to build it up. Adding an overgrip typically increases the size by 1/16 of an inch. If that’s not suf?cient, a racquet technician can add a heat-shrink sleeve (a tight ?tting piece of plastic) over your handle, which adds about 1/8 inch. However, dropping down in grip size is problematic. Most of to-day’s handles aren’t made to be shaved down, and even if you could do it, the procedure could cost almost as much as a new racquet. So if you want a smaller grip, your best bet is to buy a new stick. Before you make the investment, make sure you test it out thoroughly. Just be-cause Rafa creates extra spin with a tiny grip doesn’t mean it’s going to do the same for you.

STRINGS

Fifteen years ago, most professionals were using natural gut exclusively. Today, polyester strings and blends of polyester and natural gut are the most popular. “A lot of European and South American players grew up with poly-ester because it’s a cheap and durable string,” Bone says. “When they got to the tour, they stuck with it.” The most popular polyester-based brand is Luxilon. Pros ? nd that poly offers enhanced control. Though some pros string their racquets entirely with it, most use a hybrid of polyester and natural gut. The gut provides power, while the polyester adds precision.

Prokes says the pros burn through strings, and that he restrings many pros’ racquets that they haven’t even used. That’s because over the course of a day a freshly strung racquet still loses a bit of tension. So even if Roddick uses only ? ve of the 10 racquets he has strung for a match, he’ll still have all 10 restrung.

Your Turn >> Polyester-based strings like Luxilon offer the pros greater control than natural gut or nylon, but that doesn’t mean recreational players should make the switch. “When we do blind playtests of Luxilon, it doesn’t score that high with our recreational players,” Bone says. “You may have to be a high-level player to appreciate its bene?ts.” If you experiment with different strings, adjust your tensions accordingly. Switch to polyester, which is stiff, and you may want to string 5 to 10 per-cent looser than normal. With natural gut, a comfortable and highly resilient string, a tighter tension may be necessary. Remember that tension drops up to 10 percent in the ? rst 24 hours after a string job. So, unless you’re restringing daily like the pros, it’s best to wait a day until the strings have settled before passing judgment.

And if you string with a hybrid, all at the same tension, keep in mind that the crosses will be tighter than the mains since they’re shorter. Plus, during stringing, as the cross strings are pulled through the main strings they loosen the mains slightly. In the end, customizing your racquet may not be enough. Each time you hit a ball, you break racquet ?bers. Though there may not be a visible crack in the frame, a racquet will eventually start to feel dead. Most pros go through 50 to 70 racquets a year. In his playing days, Andre Agassi used about 100 annually. If your racquet feels dead, or “soft,” you might need an upgrade.

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