Another tennis question.....

[Aglarond]

After posting my last question, I thought of another one. I remember as a kid hearing about something called ‘spaghetti stringing’. It was causing a huge uproar and is now no longer allowed. IIRC, the advantage was that the ball spent more time on the strings and you could hit it back with more spin. What exactly was spaghetti stringing?

[BoBettie]

I searched Yahoo for “spaghetti stringing”, and this is from the very first site it listed:

Nadine Gelberg: Well it is interesting. There were no restrictions on tennis racquets, you could play with absolutely anything; a tennis racquet was defined as ‘the implement used to hit the ball’, which meant you could use a broom, you could use a bottle, anything that could hit the ball, that was defined as a tennis racquet. But in 1977 an ingenious engineer came up with a new stringing system that sent the established tennis elite into an uproar. It created basically an immediate crisis on the professional tour, this ‘spaghetti stringing system’. What it was was three planes of non-intersecting strings, with a plastic coating on the outside of the strings. And it held the ball on the strings longer, allowing athletes to impart greater topspring on the ball than they would with a normal topspin stroke. And unlike other technology, such as the Prince tennis racquet, that developed slowly over time, that entered through the recreational market, that required modifications to be an advantageous tool to the professional athlete, this stringing system created huge upsets on the professional tour: 200th ranked players were beating 4th seeded players.

from the website:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/sportsf/sstories/sf990205.htm

Zette

[Aglarond]

Thanks Zette. I had run a search on Google and came up with the same site, along with another one that seemed to link to a book that contained information on spaghetti stringing. What I’m looking for is a picture of a spaghetti strung racket, or the stringing guideleines. I’m not wanting to do it, I’m just curious.