It has been almost a two week break from tennis for me with my trip and the Chinese New Year celebrations. But I could not stop thinking about this Extra Low Tension (ELT) experiments. So now that I'm back, it's action time!
The thinnest string I have is 17g. I laced up my favourite and most familiar racket, the Wilson Pro Staff Classic 6.1 with the synthetic gut Titan. Now my fear is not trampoline but how much more spin am I going to get. Too much, and I know all my shots are going to just curl down inside MY SIDE of the court. Yes, it's that much and that drastic!
With the mains completed, I was "pinging" the strings to listen to the pitch. Surprisingly, it didn't sound too different from tensioning it at 50+ lbs! Maybe I am tone deaf?
At 30lbs, the string does not even stretch much. I have to mentally "re-calibrate" how much allowance to allocate to get the drop weight arm parallel to the ground. The extra amount of string to feed feels like I am stringing poly.
Playtest:
- Even at only 30 lbs in a 16x18, the stringbed did not feel drastically looser than my previous Dunlop AG200 18x20 strung at 35/33. It's very marginal.
- Spin is more than the Dunlop, perhaps due to the open pattern and 17g strings
- Power is very very good and the spin makes the power very controllable. No problems at all aiming for corners at baseline or service box. Out of 10 corner attempts, I hit about 8 which is similar to my kevlar/syn gut setup.
- I cannot feel any tension loss after an hour of hard hits.
- No trampoline at all.
- Full marks for volleys again
- Passing shots that caught me off-guard or wrong-footed are easily returned DEEP with a light tap
- Service had pace. Visually, the ball was travelling faster than with my trusted and favoured kevlar/syn gut setup.
- Spin serves were deadly. It touched my partner's racket face and bounced off weird angles!
- This setup is staying!
- Below pic is after one hour of play with no string adjustments done! Can you see the "ring of fur"? That's my sweetspot! The darker coloured cross strings near the fur is a result of the main strings movements. (Click on the pic for a closer look)
PS: My partner commented that with SO MUCH ball fur thrown in our faces at every hit, we better ensure the balls are FDA-approved and non-toxic!!! And we must start coughing out furballs like cats after every game!!!
15Feb2013 update:
- had another session with this racket
- we could not feel any tension loss. The racket played and felt exactly like it did the first round.
- perhaps due to the light rain and wet balls, there was no significant ball fur accumulating on the strings
- power, spin and control remains excellent
- one new observation was when I was returning hard flat shots, the stringbed depression felt a little too deep. I may up tension slightly next time and observe
- overall, i will still stick with this ELT setup
19Feb2013 update:
- played with this racket again after removing the fur and straightening the strings
- spin, control and power still feels equally good
- found another way of hitting topspin that can make the ball kick differently
- below's the before and after pics
21Feb2013 update:
- I straightened out the strings, removed the fur and played with it again
- Tension seems to have dropped a little but did not affect spin nor control
- Spin is still absolutely amazing! It is fun to see the ball curl and kick!
- My tennis balls are getting bald!
27Feb2013 update:
- After more than 10 hours of play, I can feel a significant tension loss.
- The stringbed depression feels so deep now that I have to be very careful where I finish my swing follow-through. Pull a little left and that's where the ball will go!
- The heavy spin is gone. Power is very low too.
- Time to cut this out!
Strings:
Pro Supex Synthetic Gut Titan 1.25mm @ 30 lbs
No comments:
Post a Comment