After reading about my past fishing line experiments, an acquaintance got really curious. He pestered me to string one up for him to try.
With the ridiculous amount of time needed for string prep and prestretch, coupled with the low success rate and very short playing durability, I put on a straight face and quoted him something absurd.
Within seconds, he stuffed that amount into my hands. Ouch!!! Guess I have to re-live my nightmare on elm street again...
Thus far, fishing line was the only "string" that snapped and cut my hand and face during tensioning. When the string slipped, it also sent my flying clamps literally flying. The dropweight also crashed into and dented my table top. My pinky was also cut when tugging at the knot.
(If you have not read how difficult it was to string with fishing line, you can click here to find out)
While digging through my spools, and looking at the shimmering slick smooth surface, I wondered how would it perform as a cross with natural gut mains. Could it outperform poly?
Since I had plenty leftover from a previous "sponsor" and a worn set of poly needing replacement...
(Just a note that this was my personal setup. That friend had requested for something else to be paired with fishing line.)
Playtest:
- Just by tugging the mains aside and releasing it, I could see how fast and easy the snapback was.
- On court, it did not disappoint. The spin was fantastic and the strings always remained straight.
- The feel was actually identical to a freshly strung gut/poly stringjob - soft, comfortable, powerful, controlled and spinny. Perhaps a little softer since there was no poly.
- The differences was there was zero break-in needed.
- With poly, sometimes the first hits were a little tight and low-powered. Then it played better after an hour. But since fishing line behaved more like a nylon, there was much more liveliness to it.
- I would describe the fishing cross string to have "the comfort of syn gut with the slickness of poly".
- Another distinction was the consistency of tension holding. After two hours, it seemed to hold up much better than poly.
- Among all the natural gut combinations I have tried, I have no hesitations ranking this as the best for spin, comfort, power and control. The incredible slickness of the fishing line simply allowed much more free sliding between gut/fish and even fish/fish.
- The paramount task now, would be to hunt down my fishing line sponsor and find out which brand and specs of the fishing line he passed to me previously!
- The next few sessions would be interesting.
I am an oldie. I like older rackets with heavier frames, especially their impeccable feel.
To me, oldies play superior. They just don't make rackets like they do anymore. New ones feel so light, stiff and hollow. Neither do I feel that I am missing out that much on new racket technologies.
However, after trying out a friend's modern stick for an entire session, there was something that lingered...
Long after I returned the racket, I could not stop thinking about that stock grip. Specifically, that huge butt on that 4¼" grip size.
Usually, playing with any grip smaller than a 4⅜" meant I had to use my "death grip" to prevent the racket from flying further than the ball. With that racket, it did not happen!
The feeling was probably best described by Seamus Heaney in the first two lines of his poem, "Digging":
"Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen racket butt rests; snug as a gun."
Despite being nostalgic for old sticks, I cannot ignore the impact topspin has on today's game. Many commented on how much easier and extra spin they obtained just by using that spin stick.
After using that, I would attribute a big chunk of that phenomenal spin generation to the "modern" combination of a slightly undersized grip with a much larger butt diameter. This combination was exceptionally pronounced in Richard Gasquet's racket grip shape. Google it!
Other than the spin, the larger butt sits tight and secure in the hollow right in the middle of the palm. That adds tremendous stability to the racket hoop, especially on serves, return of serves and volleys, while allowing a very gentle hold.
And the good news is, it is extremely easy to "modernise" your racket grip. Either a long strip of foam or an old used overgrip gets it done. Somewhat like the pics in this post.
Spin away!!!
While much have been said about how heat causes tension loss in synthetic gut, I have not read nor heard much about how heat affects poly strings.
So I did a simple experiment comparing poly with synthetic gut...
Objectives
(1) To test effect of heat on string tension, and
(2) To test effect of impact stress on string tension.
Methodology
- A piece each of new synthetic gut and poly string was manually pre-stretched for 120 seconds, then tensioned thrice at 50 lbs in the 6th and 7th main in a tennis racket, then tied-off.
- The pre-stretching and triple tensioning was to reduce tension loss through string relaxation.
- Tie-off tension loss would be very significant but not of interest in this study.
- Each impact stress was simulated by using a ruler to measure and depress each string about 1 cm deep, thrice.
- Note that when each piece (ie 6th main or 7th main) of the same string type is depressed, sometimes the tension differential would change between these two string. So the average is taken for greater accuracy.
- For heat stress, a hairdryer was held 1 cm away from the strings and moved slowly along the string for a total of 1 minute each time. The temperature was constant at about 40 degrees Celsius, which was well below the temperature in a parked car in the sun. (link1)(link2)(link3)
- All tension loss measurements were done through string frequency in Hertz (Hz).
Findings
Remember, the strings were both heavily pre-stretched and tensioned thrice. Despite that, what stood out was, from the total tension loss:
(1) poly lost less through string relaxation compared to syn gut,
(2) syn gut lost almost nothing through impact stress whereas poly suffered badly,
(3) heat affects syn gut twice as badly as poly, and
(4) as long as kept away from heat, syn gut's tension holding is impeccable whereas poly must be restrung very often for hard-hitters.
From my previous 10 full syn gut and 10 full poly string jobs, I felt the strings became unplayable (dead, harsh, no spin, poor control, etc), when the tension loss (in hz) reached about 9% for syn gut and about 6% for poly.
Based on the above, poly became unplayable to me after the 1st impact stress. Syn gut "died" after 2 mere minutes of heat stress.
Keep strung rackets away from heat if possible and restring poly very very often.
