A Warped Vantage Custom

A ranked tour player, RK, whom I have been working with for the past two and a half years, encountered a rare string snap during a multi-leg multi-country tour.

Down to only one racket, RK decided to send in his stick to the tournament stringer. Something he rarely does.

It was strung alright. As in the strings were filled, weaved properly, tensioned and tied-off. However, he felt it was unplayable. It was his racket indeed but somehow he could not play with it.

Everything felt wrong - feel, sweet spot size/location, stability, accuracy, control and power. His usual serve and volley game fell apart completely. He could not serve with confidence. He could not volley.

Left without any choice, RK relegated that freshly strung stick to be a backup racket of last resort.

And continued using the other racket I had strung for all practices and matches, singles and doubles, for the remaining legs of his tour!

RK was kind enough to withhold this from me until his return to Singapore. I was absolutely stunned and speechless when I heard it!!!

Then he handed me the "odd" racket. The one with green strings. Yes, it was warped. Hoop was compressed 3mm.

In the last post on the Head Prestige S, I had problems with parallax error in the pics. 

So this time, I took two short video clips of the warped Vantage racket. One strung. The other with strings cut. The above two pics were screen prints obtained from the two video clips.

Please watch the two videos below and decide for yourself if the hoop warp was acceptable.

Below video with strings intact

Below video with strings cut

Apologies for the upside down video. Not sure why or how it happened :)