I am just about finished with my latest evaluation of tennis strings for the GSS Alliance web site and I am stunned at the number of strings available!  Of course there have always been several strings that stand out from long time “brands” but with the new view toward “shaped” string the number of new strings is exploding!

The old standards that we called, unscientifically, “synthetic gut” are being joined by an amazing number of strings that are being processed with a certain “shape”.  The shape can be a triangle, square, pentagonal, octagonal, septagonal and about any other “agonal” you can think of.  The shape is intended to add “bite” between the string and the ball and, therefore increase spin.  It seems most of these string offerings are in the co-polyester family.

However, when I was testing strings from a number of manufacturers I discovered several shaped strings outside of the polyester family.  If you want to try a shaped string but don’t want to move to a polyester based string ask your racquet technician about the options.

There are many!