Fancy: Fishing Line / Round Poly

Just wondering what would happen when I hybrid two very slick lines together...

Playtest:
- This played nice and tight. The comfort and power felt like something between a gut/poly and multi/poly setup.
- Accuracy was as good as I expected it to be. No surprise as this is half poly after all.
- Spin was good when I stepped it up. I could distinctly hear the strings "crackling" as it slided during ball contact. But when I inspected the strings, there was no need to straighten them at all. There was full snapback. So that's a great plus!
- Comfort and pocketing was very good. I have no hesitations recommending this to my friends even if they have arm pain. 
- The stringbed cushioned well enough and yet maintained a similar rebound angle as normal tennis strings done in the 60+ lbs.
- One variable that intrigued me was how linear the pocketing and rebound power was. Soft hits pocketed shallow, medium hits pocketed medium-deep and hard hits pocketed deep. 
- And the rebound power from the stringbed correlated very proportionately with the intensity of hits. This is not something I've felt with all other strings except natural gut. All other tight stringbeds I've tried usually felt a little dead with light hits and livened up with full swings.
- The next thing to monitor is tension and string durability. 
- Below pic was after an hour of hits. Strings were not straightened.

25Oct2013 update:
- Pocketing has deepened slightly. I would attribute it to the poly losing some tension and stretching. But the rebound was still very fast and consistent.
- The very heavy pre-stretching helped a lot in tension holding for the fishing line. It played as tight as it did the first session. Full snapback again.
- Some light notching was observed on the fishing line mains.

- I rotated three rackets to give me a better comparison of how each played. These last few stringings I did was each optimized either for spin (link), power (link) or control (this fishing / poly). Although I have been playing like crap, I liked both the spin and control setups more.

30Oct2013 update:
- Notching remains very slight after play today. 
- Despite the notching, the mains were still able to slide freely. I still did not have to adjust the strings at all after play.
- Spin and power are both still very good and consistent.
- During an overhead smash near the net today, I heard a very loud "thwack" when I hit the ball. I thought the strings burst but it did not. So it seems this combination of strings generated a very loud bursting sound during smashes.
- Just to reset my feel, I brought my kevlar / syn gut PSC6.1 (link) to compare with this fishing / poly setup. I am pleasantly surprised that both spin and control were very similar for both!

02Nov2013 update:
- Fishing line has a very narrow useful range of play. Above that range, it plays exceptionally harsh (worse than kevlar). Below that, it cannot hold tension at all. I believe I found that range now. It plays really nice, comfortable, spinny and controllable.
- Tension holding is impeccable! From frequency tests, despite having clocked about 6 hours of play, total tension loss was less than 6 lbs compared to immediately off the stringing machine! All that pre-stretch helped.
- String movement was still very low despite the better than average spin levels.
- Notching was only very slightly deeper than previously.

16Nov2013 update:
- The consistency of this setup really impressed me. After this session of play, this would have clocked more than 8 hours of use.
- Despite that, tension holding was excellent! The drop was only about 5hz (approximately 0.5 lbs) after today's game.
- Spin, power and comfort remained as good as it did when the strings were fresh. In fact, I could not even tell any difference between the 1st and the 8th hour of use.- String movement was very minimal. Even when I whipped the racket with loud crackling sounds of the strings moving, they still snapped back on their own. (See pic below)
- Notching has only gotten very slightly deeper.
- This setup is a keeper!

20Jan2014 update:
- I lost count how many hours of play I had with these strings. 
- Tension holding and playability ranks among the best. Not once did I feel any sense of loss of control or spin. It performed as well as it did on the first hit till the last.
- I played with a very hard hitting chap today named "D". When he got into position early, his forehand came across as powerful as the national/state players I had rallied with. Full swings were needed to return his hard shots. Anything less and my racket would be thrown backwards upon ball contact. And we were both standing about 1.5 metres behind the baseline!
- The notched mains could not last the torture...

"Double Blind" String Fitting?

A parent of a National Schools "B" Division tennis player contacted me and asked if stringing can give the kid any edge.

Without hesitation, my answer was "No".

Before coming back to tennis, I played golf and tinkered with many different setups of golf clubs. I ventured so far off traditional setups that I could not find any clubmaker to do what I wanted! Eventually, I tweaked all my clubs myself.

Unfortunately, blaming tuning my equipment did little to improve my golf. It was my swing, and my thinking that needed change.

Likewise, it is foolish to believe your rackets, strings, overgrips or shoes would drastically affect your play! The impact is always less than what people usually thought!

Nevertheless, I was handed three seemingly identical rackets for stringing. Each racket was to emphasize only one of the variables like comfort, control, power, spin or a larger sweetspot. And only I would know which racket was optimized for which variable.

What followed next was quite apparent. That's why I called this a double-blind stringing since I didn't know whom I was stringing for and neither did the player know what had been done!

Frankly, I doubt if this experiment would yield any special results. But since the parent was willing to foot the ridiculous price I quoted, I was more than happy to string. (I wondered why me and not a commercial / professional stringer?)

The only positive outcome I could think of is if the kid only wanted to accentuate specific aspects like power, or spin, or better contact. Then, this could be meaningful and possibly lead to some really good results.

I'll post an update only if that parent or kid reverts. No pictures as they requested for complete confidentiality.

30Oct2013 update:
- I saw the boy play and he's really good. Probably a ntrp 4.0-4.5?
- When I was approaching the tennis court, I could already hear the thunderous "pop" of his ball contact! I thought he was practising serves or overhead smashes. But when I saw him, he was rallying from outside the baseline!
- The other thing that stood out was his very light and quick footwork. Just like the way Michael Chang darted around the court. Super fast.
- I'm told he's not a "feel" player and I can see his brashness, just attacking and bashing at every ball with full strength.
- And the whole purpose of that blind stringing? It's just to get that kid to learn to adjust his strength and depth control. Perhaps settle on a setup that can tone some of his power or add spin.

Retrying Grass Trimmer Line (16x10)

After advising someone to try grass trimmer line in his exotic 12x16 patterned racket (link), I got very curious myself and started thinking...

I recalled the grass trimmer line hybrid (link) played a little dead for soft hits. But all-out full swings felt extremely nice. Almost like natural gut.

Then I also recalled deeply enjoying the 16x10 stringing pattern in the Black Ace 98 (link). The only downside was poor durability, lasting only about 3 hours before snapping.

If I marry the two together, how would it play? The grass trimmer line needed hard hits or a "strong loading" to play well. That's how I arrived at a 16x10 fullbed of grass trimmer line.

As usual, string tensions were way above the recommended range so I will not be posting details here.

Threading the mains first...

The way to get this thick 1.7mm gauge through the grommets is to trim the thickness down, push it through the grommet, then pull with a pair of pliers.

The racket is a Dunlop Aerogel 200 (18x20) if anyone is curious.

Edit:
This stringjob took a little more than 90 minutes. Threading the thick string through the small and very tight grommets took up the most amount of time.

Towards the last few crosses, I grew tired and lax and pulled the string a little too hard and too fast. Just realised that a few mains were notched near the bottom crosses...

Can you imagine how rough the texture is now?


Playtest:
- Strangely, a fullbed of this played much better than a hybrid.
- Compared to the hybrid, ball feel, spin and control were better. 
- Instead of needing hard hits for the stringbed to come to live, even modest shots felt good. The skipped crosses did its job well to soften the stringbed. Now, it feels like a normal thick gauge tennis string.
- Due to the very harsh string texture, the crosses did not move at all. Only the mains slided back and forth. When I pulled the cross aside, there was very deep notching on the mains.
- Spin was very good from the mains slide and rough texture. Particular spin serves. A couple of my topspin serves kicked over my partner's height. I'm pleased.
- Control was very good despite the very open pattern. No problems with aiming except when the strings were not straightened out, then some mis-directions occurred.
- Very playable and enjoyable for me, especially the spin!

25Oct2013 update:
- I only rallied with this racket for about 15 minutes in the morning. 
- Tension loss was evident compared to the previous session. Not as bad as to render control useless but enough to make me think about stringing this tighter, or filling in all the missing crosses if I use this again.
- At night, I heard a main string snap in the bag. With this string at 1.7mm thickness, notching must have been the culprit...

Fancy: 0.70mm Fishing Line

I guess I'm really hooked (...pun intended...) on fishing line...

If you missed the previous posts, here they are:

Fancy: Fishing Line Anyone?

Fancy: How About Grass Trimmer Line?

Fancy: Galvanized Steel Wire?

Fancy: 0.90mm Fishing Line

This time I'm going down to badminton gauge. It has to be a hybrid since the previous 0.90mm could not last in a full bed.

But it looks more like 0.75mm to me? Given how much it will stretch, it's definitely going to be much thinner after it's strung!

This was extremely challenging to string. The string is so thin the clamps kept slipping. But when the clamps were too tight, the strings snapped! 

Slippage at the tensioner's string jaws was even worse! A starting clamp had to be used to hold the string before tensioning. And the string snapped at the jaws too!

After carefully finishing the mains, the string snapped again when I was hand-tugging to tighten a knot. (Please protect your fingers!!! Fishing line cuts very deep!!! I wrapped my pinky with used overgrips and masking tape)

To prevent knot slippage, I had to tie several knots at each tie-off.

The pic below was my fourth attempt! After stringing this, I think doing natural gut or full poly is a walk in the park...

Just for comparison... The orange string (right racket) was the 0.90mm fishing line. The purplish-pink (left) is the 0.70mm.

If this can survive ball impacts, I'm expecting it to really bite!

Playtest:
- Everything was absolutely amazing!
- Spin was ridiculously good! Power was good! Control was good! Comfort was good too!!!
- It's unbelievable such a thin string can even sustain play! All that hard work into stringing and re-stringing was worth it.
- Below pic shows how much ball fur accumulated after only 15 minutes of light rally. I wasn't even whipping the racket yet!

- Loads of ball furs kept sticking to my shorts... I had already brushed off most of it.

- This pic shows the amount of fur accumulated after about an hour of play.

15Oct2013 update:
- Just noticed there is notching on the fishing line from the previous session of play. Not sure how much longer it will last.

19Oct2013 Update:
- String snapped on my first shot on court today... 
- Great excuse for me to move to another setup... heh... heh...

Mystery Shopping 3: The Acid Stringing Test!

A reader of this blog named "F" contacted me regarding my post on stringing machines (link).

F was totally intrigued by what I claimed to be significant differences in playability between stringing machines. He wanted the truth and suggested a "Myth Busters" experiment at his expense.

The plan was simple. He owns several matched rackets. He will get one strung by someone with an electronic machine and one on my dropweight.

To prevent any string biasness, he bought three packets of the same synthetic gut from the commercial stringer. One was used to string his racket electronically.

The second pack was given to me to string his other racket at the same tension and same stringing pattern (ie. 2 piece with exact tie-off holes)

After measuring the tension (by frequencies) of both stringbeds, we proceeded to hit some balls at the tennis court. Three of F's tennis partners (about ntrp 5.0 players) joined us and played with the unmarked rackets. Each had exactly 5 minutes. Only F and me knew the differences. The others were kept totally in the dark.

Unanimously, all expressed a strong preference for the dropweight strung racket. The three friends even thought the electronically strung racket had dead, old and stale strings!!!

The differences all of us felt most significant were:
1. stringbed liveliness,
2. power, and
3. spin

String tension was measured after every 30 minutes of play for 2 hours. After the session, the strings were cut out, preserving several long continuous pieces intact from the same spot in both rackets. Specifically, the centre 6 mains and between crosses 6-12.

Elasticity of the four lengths of strings were tested by holding them under tension at 50 lbs in the dropweight.

Here's our findings:

Initial String Tension
- The electronically strung racket registered a frequency about 58hz higher, translating to about 6 lbs tighter.

After Play String Tension

- At 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes of continuous play, the dropweight strung racket (orange line) lost much less tension than the other racket (blue line). The rate of tension loss also stabilized after about an hour whereas the electronically strung continued losing tension even at 120 minutes of play.

Elasticity Test
- Both pieces from the electronically strung racket lost a lot more elasticity. 
- Both dropweight strung pieces of string stretched about 2.3% more than the other string. 
- The full stretch was recovered when tension was released for all the strings.

As far as F and his partners are concerned, they have found their answers.

Note:
Since this test could affect someone's livelihood, no details nor pictures were posted. Neither would any questions concerning the racket, string brand or electronic machine be answered.