record-breaking power hits and serves have been recorded in great amounts, particularly in the past decade. Still, tennis racquets are not the only apparel that is responsible for the better performance of today’s tennis players. Tennis strings would have to be classified as the second most deserving tennis apparel that has helped today’s tennis players. Before World War II, tennis strings consisted of a highly strengthened and thin sailor rope, or sometimes even a pig skin rope. After the war, however, plastics made a great impact on the tennis world. Up until the late 1970’s, nylon strings have been used as the only type of strings available. The strings were made from a smooth, two part braid of hard plastic, which was blue and made up 30 percent of the strings, and a synthetic nylon that covered the remaining 70 percent of the overall string. Wilson was the first to introduce an all-nylon string with kevlar coating around it. By applying a layer of kevlar onto the string, Wilson almost tripled the life span of if its new tennis strings. Kevlar, however, had its disadvantages which made many players reluctant to use it. It was hard to apply kevlar coating evenly on the racquet, and even if that was done, the hitting area would often lose the coating first, leaving the racquet vibrating far more than usual. Vibrations were known to often occur only hours after playing with new, kevlar-coated strings. Although these vibrations were not always present, one out of five racquets was estimated to have an unevenly applied kevlar coating during that time. An Australian tennis company called Gamma, which focused on manufacturing tennis strings only, came up with the solution to this problem in 1985. By applying kevlar over a nylon string and then wrapping it into another layer of nylon fibers, the racquets were vibration free, and had a longer lasting life at the same time. Gamma would further pioneer its research in the str...
