Going With your Gut (String Theory)

Picking the right string for your game is a feeling-out process. Click here for a list of different string types. Much like finding the right spouse, when it comes to selecting strings, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A string that feels soft and forgiving to one player can seem mushy and dead to another. With so much being left to perception, it would make sense that, just as with a racquet, players spend a lot of time experimenting with various strings to fi nd the perfect fi t. Yet strings don’t get anywhere near the consideration that racquets do. Players routinely leave strings in their frames for far too long and use varieties that don’t mesh with their style of play. “You can spend a couple of hundred dollars on a racquet, but if you use the wrong strings, it won’t play well,” Roman Prokes, of RPNY Tennis, in New York, says. He strings and customizes racquets for many top players, including Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova. “You can also buy a fairly inexpensive racquet, and if you get a good string job it can play great.” When it comes to materials, natural gut, nylon (multifi lament synthetics), and polyester make up the vast majority of strings. But navigating through the hundreds of offerings and their subtleties can be daunting. From a playing standpoint, gut provides the most feel, polyester offers the greatest durability, and nylon is generally balanced between the two. Since there has been a shift toward baseline play with less emphasis on touch shots—particularly at the pro level—stiffer, more controloriented strings are increasingly prevalent. The brand you hear about most often is the polyester-based Luxilon. “I think Luxilon is the biggest change in the game since graphite racquets,” Prokes says. Although he’s not certain what about the string’s composition makes it so special, Prokes touts the great control and bite it imparts on the ball. The pros must agree: Dozens of top players, including James Blake and Svetlana Kuznetsova, have Luxilon in their racquets. Not surprisingly, this trend has reached the weekend warrior. “There’s a lot more polyesters on the pro tour,” says David Bone, executive director of the U.S. Racquet Stringers Association, “and it trickles down to the mere mortals.” If you’re a string-breaker, the sturdiness of polyester can be an asset. Still, you have to weigh that against the stiffness of the typical poly, which some players find unforgiving. “Any blind test we do, polyester doesn’t stand out as special,” Bone says. In the 2006 USRSA string survey, in an average score of playability, durability, and comfort, no polyester ranked in the Top 40. But over the past few years, companies have made adjustments to make polys more userfriendly. “A polyester used to mean a monofilament,” Bone says. “Now they bond polyester with other materials that make it more playable.” If polyester doesn’t appeal to you, consider multifilament synthetics. This is the largest segment of the string population, encompassing a wide range from high-performance strings to basic synthetics. This gives the consumer many choices at varying prices. Softer multifilaments play like gut, which can appeal to net-rushers, doubles specialists, or anyone with arm troubles, but at a cheaper price. On the other end of the spectrum there are more durable multifilaments that have excellent lifespan for string-breakers but aren’t quite as stiff as polyesters. Another trend is the hybrid, in which two different strings are combined in one racquet. The most common hybrid involves using a polyester in the mains (up-and-down strings) for durability (since you typically break those first), and a synthetic or gut in the crosses to soften the string bed. “You get the best of both worlds,” says Prokes, who recommends the combination for many of his clients. According to Bone, more than half of the pros who got their racquets strung on-site at the WTA’s Acura Classic last summer were using a polyester-and-gut combo. Because of the hybrid’s popularity, many companies are packaging the two strings as one set. That said, the best way to fi nd the ideal match for your game is through trial and error. There is little research to prove claims that certain strings increase power or spin, so it only matters how it feels to you. “There are things that you discover when you play with a string that can’t be measured by a machine,” Prokes says. “If you like the way something feels, that may cause you to swing with more confidence.” And that, of course, is all that counts.