for even more advanced materials. Wilson quickly responded to Prince’s breakthrough racquet by introducing its first own graphite racquet in 1980, the Wilson ProStaff 6.0. Unlike Prince and other companies who jumped on making all-graphite racquets, Wilson made a slower transition from wood to graphite with its ProStaff 6.0. Wilson decided to design a racquet with a mixture of 80 percent graphite and 20 percent kevlar, a heavier, metal-based material. Wilson’s intention was to maintain the original weight and control of a wooden racquet, while at the same time providing superb stiffness. This transition turned out to be very successful since ProStaff 6.0 has been the highest selling racquet for the past twenty years. Wilson would follow it success with other lines of racquets, including ProStaff 6.1, which has a larger hitting area than its predecessor ProStaff 6.0. In the same decade, companies like Yonex, Dunlop, Fischer, Head, Spalding, and others, started to innovate new designs and experiment with other materials. During the late 1980s, players started to get more choice on which brand and type of racquet to use. Also during this time, companies started to focus on making racquets that were specifically designed for amateur players and even beginners. Aside from implementing Wilson’s 28-inch long racquets, otherwise known as long body racquets, other companies started to make the hitting area of a racquet larger. By making the head of a racquet bigger, companies added more power to the racquet, as well as decreased the margin of error or miss-hitting the ball. By making tennis easier for the beginners, new racquet designs popularized tennis even more. Companies started following the theory that consumers would more than likely stay loyal to the brand of a racquet which they started using first. The 1990’s are a prime example of a full implementation of this theory. An American company called Head, which gai...
