Evolution Of Tennis Racquet

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The Evolution of Tennis Racquets and Strings
The innovations in the material of the tennis racquet — the strings and the frame — have changed tennis throughout the years; thus, fundamentally changing the game by allowing players to hit with more power, spin, and racquet speed. Many star professional tennis players in the past and present use new technology to help take their game to new levels. The change from a wooden racquet to a carbon-fiber tennis racquet and the change from cow gut strings to non-gut synthetic strings have changed the way tennis is played.
In the 1960s and 1970s, tennis players used wooden racquets and strings made from cow gut. The four main wooden racquet brands that players used were Dunlop, Slazenger, Wilson, and Spalding (“Tennis
Use of graphite became popular when another legendary professional, Arthur Ashe, began using Head Presige’s one-hundred percent graphite racquet (“Tennis Nuts” 2017). The graphite racquet became extremely popular because of the stiffness. Even though the racquet was quite heavy, the main characteristic that made the graphite racquet so popular was the reduced vibration when a player hit the ball off the racquet (“Evolution of Tennis Rackets” 2017). The graphite racquet continued to be popular and began to be used by many other professional tennis players as well, such as Pete Sampras, who won fourteen Grand Slam titles in his career. Sampras used a graphite racquet named the Wilson Pro Staff. The Wilson Pro Staff was introduced in 1983, and tennis players seemed to enjoy this racquet because of the distinct feel it gave off. (“Tennis Nuts” 2017) Another graphite racquet called the Dunlop Max 200G debuted in 1980. (“Tennis Nuts” 2017) This racquet was used by legend John McEnroe and one of the greatest female tennis players of all time, Steffi Graf. The Dunlop Max 200G was lighter in weight compared to most graphite tennis

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