Four eras can be singled out when outlining the evolution of the materials used for tennis racquets’ strings:
– 1875-1945: natural sheep gut
– 1950-1997: natural cow casing
– 1975: synthetic materials (to this day)
– 1984: hybrid materials (to this day).
The changes in materials for the production of tennis strings were mostly driven by cost minimization strategies. After World War II there was a shortage of sheep, so from the 1950s onwards cow guts were used, leading to the implementation of black strings as well. But it is from the second half of the 1970s that manufacturers started to employ synthetic materials in the construction of strings, always with the aim of reducing costs and increasing the life of the string itself. Since then, primary materials such as polyester, kevlar, zyex, ventran, polyurethane or nylon (or a combination of these) have been used to experiment with new ways to improve string performances. Among these, nylon is the most common, but polyester is also used frequently to increase the duration of the strings. Synthetic strings can be created using a single solid strand or hundreds of small strands.
Since the beginning of the 1980s, thanks to the growth in popularity of the game, manufacturers began to experiment with the physics behind the game and to look for the optimum string tensions that would allow for the improvement of a player’s performance. At the 1997 French Open, a stringing revolution occurred: a relatively unknown Brazilian, Gustavo Kuerten, won the first of his three Parisian titles with a brand-new product fitted to his Head racquet: a Luxilon polyester string made in Belgium. The stiffer string gave Kuerten more control and, therefore, enabled him to produce more topspin. Polyester may have started a sudden and dramatic relinquish of natural gut, but more recently gut and polyester have found a way to coexist. Hybrid strings, where the horizontal strings feature one type of material and the vertical strings another, offers players better balance between control and power. High-level players, such as Federer, mostly use hybrid strings. Although we do not know what the material of the future will be, we believe that producers will have to respond to new challenges, especially on an environmental level. The first one consists of the maturing of a vegan conscience among the public but also among some players who realise that animal slaughter is unnecessary, since their needs can be satisfied by synthetic options. The second one is given by the use of recyclable materials in the perspective of a circular economy, which aims to reduce both waste and ultimately the amount of it that is to be incinerated. What is certain is that, at the professional tennis level, top players on the tennis stage will try to find the next “Kuerten effect” in order to gain a competitive edge.
The role of professional stringers
If “ski-men” and bicycle mechanics are the professional figures in charge of the maintenance and fine configuration of racing skis and bicycles, tennis finds an equivalent figure in professional stringers who are dedicated to the fine tuning of the strings of a racquet.
But how much does it cost to string a tennis racquet for a regular club player? According to a research carried out by tennisgems.com on US soil, the average total cost is between 20 and 40 dollars, with average strings cost ranging from 10 to 20 dollars, while the average cost of labour is between 10 and 20 as well. According to another research conducted among different suppliers by racketstringers.com in Europe, on average one would have to pay €15 for the strings and €12.50 for the cost of labour. Therefore, the total mean cost of stringing a racquet should be around €27.50.
The cost of the strings depends on a variety of factors such as the brand and material. The average expenditures outlined above seem fair for club players looking for reliable strings. Some more money could be saved by getting them online: indeed, the doxa is that the prices of sporting goods stores are generally higher, since these have fixed costs, such as the rent, which need to be offset. Small independent stringers and amateurs obviously don’t have these costs. Local club coaches and non-professional stringers often start stringing racquets mainly for passion, interest in a small business, or to save money on stringing costs for their own racquets. Then they typically offer their services to family, friends, and other club members. These people entrust their racquets to them because in the meantime a relationship based on trust has been nurtured – the added benefit is that they can also save time and money compared to sporting goods stores. Since amateur stringers consider it a hobby at this stage, prices are generally lower, as their main purpose is to retain their stringing machines and buy new strings for themselves. Due to their passion and low prices, interest in their services can grow rapidly. They will therefore face the question: continue stringing as a hobby or offer a professional service? That must have been what prompted Nate Ferguson to become a professional stringer. In 1998, he created Priority One, a company that had the opportunity to work exclusively with Pete Sampras, after Nate had customized his racquets for the previous eight years. Nowadays, this boutique firm offers its racquet “fine tuning” services to a small group of élite male players, including Djokovic, Federer (a client since 2004), Wawrinka, Murray, Raonic and Isner, to name a few. The goal of the company is to provide assistance to the four Grand Slam tournaments and top-tier events on the ATP tour.
What are the normal stringing costs for ATP Tournaments?
When it comes to stringing services, most ATP players use local stringers made available by tournaments, who charge a nominal fee for stringing the racquet (up to a maximum of US$ 20/€ 20 per racquet). While this may be more than enough for the vast majority of pros, we’ve seen that a select group of players leave nothing to chance and want the same stringing week after week – how much do they spend for these personal services?
During the 2019 Swiss Indoors in Basel, Swiss TV channel SRF spoke to Priority One’s Ron Yu (during the pandemic, the New York Times wrote an article about him) who revealed that Federer’s service package costs US$ 40,000 per year. This hefty fee covers the four Grand Slam events, the Masters 1000 and some ATP 500 events that the Swiss regularly plays such as Dubai, Halle and Basel itself. Knowing that Federer has played 17 tournaments in 2019 (excluding the Laver Cup), this equates to US$ 2,353 per tournament. Looking at the percentage of the prize pool, Federer earned 8,716,975 dollars in 2019, which means he spent 0.5% of his earnings on stringing. Considering that Federer played 63 matches during the 2019 season (53 wins) and that he uses a set of nine racquets per match, it is easy to calculate the stringing costs during a tournament:
40.000: 63: 9 ~ 70,55 US$
The cost per racket strung during a tournament would thus seem cheap for a player of this level. It is not entirely clear, however, if other services or bonuses are paid for separately and what is included in the package.
Other customers, like Tsonga, spent 3.7% of the prize money earned during 2019 on stringing, while Raonic spent 3.1%. However, both players earned over 1 million dollars, an above-average bounty.
In conclusion, we can observe how synthetic materials have increased the duration of the strings of tennis racquets, allowing a greater number of people to be able to play tennis. So far, the changes in the materials of the strings have been mainly promoted for reasons related to the minimization of production costs and the search for an improvement in performances. However, the author of this article believes that the future innovation drives will come from factors linked to environmental preservation, a cause already promoted today by important players of the tennis tour. As for the job of the professional stringer, since tennis is a top-down sport, where the unequal distribution of wealth obeys meritocratic logic, it is conceivable that even these figures and their firm boutiques will survive, as long as they are not replaced by cheaper, ground-breaking robotic machines.
Written and translated by Andrea Canella; edited by Tommaso Villa
