Why You Re-string Your Racquet

The question  “why should I re-string my racquet?” will always be asked by someone.  As the old saying goes, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” right? With racquet strings and racquets, the answer is not that simple. In a nutshell, we re-string because power (energy) is stored in the strings. If you’re in doubt, drop a tennis ball on a hard court, or any concrete surface, and see how high it bounces. Now, put your racquet on the ground and support it with your foot to make it stable and drop the ball from the same height again, only this time drop it onto the strings of your racquet.  You will clearly see a difference as the ball bounces higher.

So, you may ask “If the strings aren’t broken, why should I spend the money on new ones? After all, I can buy a whole case of beer for the price of a good string job these days”. Well maybe you’re right about that if you like cheap beer and for the record, if you drink that case of beer, it’s not really going to make that much difference one way or the other about how good your strings are anyway, right? But once you recover from your hangover you might want to play some tennis. If that’s the case here’s something you should know about your strings. Strings stretch when they are tensioned in the stringing machine and they also stretch at impact when striking a ball. The technical term for this phenomenon is elongation. But their ability to recover to their normal state once they are stretched is the real key. This is called elasticity and this recovery rate is what separates one string from another. If your strings are new, you’ve got the full benefit of a nice elastic material. After several hours of play the string still stretches but you begin to notice a difference. Now your strings have lost tension and you may notice a decrease in control since the ball will remain on the strings through a longer arc causing the ball to go wide or deep.

In summary, you don’t just re-string your racquet when the string breaks. You should re-string when the tension has decreased a pre-determined amount, say 20-25%.