More Power More Spin!

While I took a two decades break away from tennis, many of my old buddies did not.

I tracked down another old mate recently, hoping to catch up on some tennis. Unfortunately, it's his turn away from tennis now. Not a voluntary decision though. 

He developed severe tennis elbow and wrist pain around the ulnar area (link). Most days, he cannot even use his master hand to drink his morning coffee. It is disheartening to see him look seemingly healthy but suffering from such pains.

He shared how his quest for "more power more spin" drove him to stiffer and stiffer frames strung tightly with full poly. But he forgot he was aging!

Just a few years ago, he was the typical profile of many tennis players today who:
- wants more spin,
- wants more power,
- uses light & very stiff frames,
- strings too tight (above 50s) with full poly, and
- restrings his rackets only every few months.

But synthetic gut can generate heaps of spin too! And add plenty of comfort along the way!

To test that, I invited a few current tennis buddies, who are heavy spinners to try syn gut. Sadly, most declined, claiming syn gut is so very passe...

C and PK were two who matched the typical profile and accepted the blind test. (PK admitted that the last he used syn gut was a few years ago.) 

All they know, were their rackets were strung with syn gut. Nothing else was communicated.

Both were asked to track amounts of spin, comfort, control, power & durability compared to their usual full poly strings.

Here's one stiff frame I restrung with full syn gut...

When I cut the poly, there was minimal snap. The string stayed close together with only a tiny gap. To me, that was an indication either the poly was strung too tight or the string was dead from use.

Another clear sign was the very severe notching on the mains. To have continued playing with this was akin to committing arm suicide.

A modified proportional stringing method was used to better distribute the string tension around the stringbed. That helps to add ball cushioning and spin.

Playtest:
- Over the March 29-30 weekend, both C and PK clocked 4 and 5 hours of play respectively with the fullbed syn gut.
- While their ages may be apart by about a decade, their feedbacks were generally similar.
- Note that I did not watch nor play with either of them.
- I grouped their findings for ease of reading below...

Initial impressions
- Both thought the all black syn gut looked like full poly.
- C was completely blown away by how comfortable the syn gut played. 
- Barely 15 minutes into his rally with his usual buddies, C could no longer contain himself and let the cat out of the bag. His partners then took turns trying his racket and declared it "unusually advantageous".

Comfort
- Unanimously very good.

Spin
- C does not normally hit with heavy topspin as he felt it was an inefficient stroke and took away too much of his power. However, this setup provided very easy access to the spin he had wanted. He pulled off a lot of slice winners and "quite a few heavy topspin shots easily".
- I found PK's feedback on spin a little contradictory, so I thought I'll just quote what he wrote:

"Spin was normal but I find that I needed less power to generate the spin. I used new US open balls (US version). The whole racket was filled with fur."

"I felt my slices was awesome today as most of it went in with a lot of spin."

"This is the first time I have seen ball fur on the strings. Never on any polys I used even with hexagon shape strings."

"Tried to use 100% full swing. I noticed that if I hit prematurely, the ball files out. Spin was good only when the contact of the ball was during the brushing motion. If I can get my timing correct, my shots will be really deadly."

I play lousy tennis compared to C and PK, but from PK's words above, it seemed like there was indeed access to a lot of spin. However, some stroke or timing adjustments may be needed compared to their regular full poly setup. Or, was PK too excited to whip the ball that he was hitting early?

Control
- C did not notice any drop in control and accuracy. 
- However, C felt that the comfort of the syn gut stringbed gave him a lot more confidence to execute difficult shots without the fear of "stinging pain" on off-centred ball contacts. If this was taken into consideration, he felt control improved.
- Another observation by C was a huge increase in the sweetspot size. He felt he miss-hit less balls with this setup.
- PK commented:

"Control was a little off today maybe because I was not used to the strings. I could not hit hard with this setup as I could feel the trampoline effect."

"I felt control was a little off after 3rd hr of playing."

Power 
- From what I heard and read, there was an abundance of power experienced by both. Only PK used the word "trampoline" once. (Note: PK is in his mid-30s, about 1.8m tall, fit, muscular and very athletic)

Durability
- There was no string breakages, no mention of string movement or notching. So I deduced it either did not happen or it was so minimal it did not bother them.
- Since I did not get to meet them, I could not measure the frequency drop after play as well.


After their feedback, I expressed thanks to both for their willingness to risk messing up their strokes to try this setup. My only objective was to prove that syn gut CAN offer heavy spin with comfort. From what I have read, I am satisfied.