Category Archives: String Sense
What is “Soft”?
For many years, we have been testing string for elongation and subsequent power potential.
There is a new batch of strings that include the term “soft” in the promotional language, seemingly in an effort to mitigate the injuries associated with very stiff strings.
At some point, we can go into detail about how the soft version of a string compares to the non-soft version; however, for now, I want to reintroduce you to a post we did in 2016… almost ten (10) years ago!
Click on this link to go to that post
Thank you for reading this again. It is important “Play Harder not Hurter™”
Snap Back?
For several years, tennis players have been told that some string material will “snap back” during impact with the tennis ball, creating an additional rotational force on the ball. This may be true for some period in some cases, but what if the string does not “snap back”?
Now what?
No Snap Back
If this happens to you, we suggest you do not move the string!
The string is in this position because your stroke sent it there! It just didn’t snap back.
This lack of snap-back creates a very nice string spacing that allows the ball to have greater intrusion into the string bed, more dwell time, and possibly more rotation.
This client strings his racquets frequently due to tension loss that may lead to what we see here. If you want to, or need to, continue playing with this racquet as you see it, try it without moving the string back into position.
The Consumer and SBS
Sting Bed Stiffness (SBS) could be considered alongside performance cars. In the simplest of terms, a high-performance car requires some understanding of what it is going to do; otherwise, you will end up in the trees or worse!
The same with String Bed Stiffness (SBS). If you don’t know what it is going to do, you may end up in the fence!
Why String Bed Stiffness (SBS) matters.
String bed stiffness is a critical performance metric and therefore deserves more attention than it gets in the discussion(s) of string characteristics.
In this video, which is a little “jumpy” at first, you will see the data we collect for every racquet we do. For this discussion, we concentrate on these data:
- Reference Tension
- RDC string bed stiffness
- Flex Four-string bed stiffness
- Racquet Quest SBS (String Sense) stiffness
- Effective stiffness
- Master Tensometer string bed stiffness (kg/cm^)
Racquet Quest, LLC
