hese racquets,however, did not have much of an impact on the buyers who were very skeptic of givingup the traditional wooden racquets. Although aluminum racquets were light andprovided power, they lacked control and stiffness, which are one of the essentialelements in the performance of a player. During the late sixties, many other Americanand international tennis companies began to emerge, providing competition and varietyto the world of tennis. Some of the companies such as Spalding and Fischer were alreadywell established sporting equipment companies who saw a promising potential in thetennis business. Spalding, in fact, was one of the first sporting equipment companies inthe United States, starting its production of baseball bats and gloves in 1894. Todays second largest tennis manufacturing company is also an Americancompany, called Prince. Prince began its production in 1967, introducing its own versionof aluminum racquets aside from their primary line of wooden ones. The company didnot become a serious competition to Wilson until 1979 with its breakthrough racquetmade out of a revolutionary material called graphite. The name of the racquet is PrinceGraphite Classic, and aside from being the first graphite racquet in the world, it is alsoone of the most popular racquets in the Princes line of racquets today. Graphite material revolutionized the tennis world and elevated competition tonew heights. Racquets made out of graphite have a much longer life than woodenracquets who through time would loose their stiffness and original shape. Unlikealuminum, graphite provided moderate amount of weight for a racquet to be heavyenough for the hard-hitting, advanced players and still light enough for the less powerfulplayers. Throughout the 1980s, graphite racquets slowly replaced wooden racquets andencouraged other companies to search for even more advanced materials. Wilson quickly responded to Princes breakthrough racquet by int...
