A player I was working with gave this oldie to me. It belonged to his dad who has long stopped using this racquet.
I changed the grips, restrung it and re-balanced it to my preference. Ended up almost 370 grams with swingweight about mid-350s.
Very rare for a stick from the 80s or 90s to have a trap door in the butt cap. Made adjustments very easy!
It played very well. The flex recovery was very fast. All my playing partners felt there was no flex at all. But it was there! All in the hoop, nothing at the throat at all.
Really a beast of a racket to play with. Enormous power, with surprisingly, fantastic built-in dampening.
Only problem was it was not really a 95 square inch. Probably much closer to 90. I aligned the Wilson Profile Tour with the ProStaff 90 and it was only marginally larger.
No wonder I struggled finding the sweetspot sometimes.
Nevertheless, an absolute delight to play with!
Questions I'm most commonly asked regarding modifications:
Before modifications
- I am not a pro player, does it make a difference?
- Would the racket become too heavy and unwieldy for me?
- Would it really make any difference to my game?
After modifications
- The racket played so well now, why didn't you suggest this earlier?
- Can you replicate the same mod on my other sticks?
- Why didn't you tell me earlier it was not a stroke/technique issue but racket problem?
- What did you do to my racket to make it play so well?
Here's a few I did recently...
Player #1
- 30+ years old lady using Wilson K Factor K Surge
- needed greater racket stability to hit through shots
- silicone in the handle for dampening and balance
Player #2
- regular racket scraper
- worn top grommets and badly worn-off graphite at hoop
- new grommets replaced
- lead inserted to restore swingweight to former specs
Player #3
- competitive player with Blade 98
- wanted to beef up power and add dampening
- likes to use heavy spin hence polarized racket weights
Player #4
- recreational and occasional player using Head TiS6
- needed some extra mass for stability (added 50 grams!)
- added dampening to protect old tennis elbow & wrist pain
I like the fan-shaped string pattern in the Head TiS6. Natural "built-in" proportional stringing.
Applying lead tape and silicone is not difficult. The real work is in assessing the player accurately, then determining/calculating the correct specs, while ensuring the ratios are maintained for that players' tempo, strength and style of play.
A tennis coach cum former tour player asked if I could replicate a pro stock racket he had bought some time ago.
To me, pro stock is just a customized frame based on a particular user's requirements.
That said, of course the manufacturer's pro room would be able to do much more, such as the grip, flex profile, string pattern, graphite layup, etc
This coach just wanted something close to what he had. I have never met him, so there was no way to verify if his racket was indeed pro stock.
After I received the funds, I procured the racket and start tweaking it to his specs.
He asked me to post some pics of the modifications process in this blog. No details though. So here they are...
To many racket connoiseurs, the made in Austria Head Prestige Tour 660 is very difficult to string properly.
The challenge stems from its very soft flex and hoop which distorts very easily.
Not my preferred racket to work on too. Many extra precautions to adopt. But, once in a while, I like challenges...
Strung with full poly strings.
New stringjob with full poly on the left while old stringjob with the stenciled head logo on the right. Both done one-piece.
Seems to me the old stringjob compressed the frame narrower.
When I checked my unstrung and strung hoop distortion, mine was out by 0.5mm. Not too bad. I'll take it!
In case you missed it, here's a previous experiment I did with my friends on stringing very flexy frames:
Racket Flex and String Tension Preference
The proud owner of this PT660 couldn't wait to take it out for a game!
