roducing its firstown graphite racquet in 1980, the Wilson ProStaff 6.0. Unlike Prince and othercompanies who jumped on making all-graphite racquets, Wilson made a slower transitionfrom wood to graphite with its ProStaff 6.0. Wilson decided to design a racquet with amixture of 80 percent graphite and 20 percent kevlar, a heavier, metal-based material. Wilsons 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 verysuccessful since ProStaff 6.0 has been the highest selling racquet for the past twentyyears. Wilson would follow it success with other lines of racquets, including ProStaff6.1, which has a larger hitting area than its predecessor ProStaff 6.0.In the same decade, companies like Yonex, Dunlop, Fischer, Head, Spalding, andothers, started to innovate new designs and experiment with other materials. During thelate 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 werespecifically designed for amateur players and even beginners. Aside from implementingWilsons 28-inch long racquets, otherwise known as long body racquets, other companiesstarted to make the hitting area of a racquet larger. By making the head of a racquetbigger, companies added more power to the racquet, as well as decreased the margin oferror or miss-hitting the ball. By making tennis easier for the beginners, new racquetdesigns popularized tennis even more. Companies started following the theory thatconsumers would more than likely stay loyal to the brand of a racquet which they startedusing first.The 1990s are a prime example of a full implementation of this theory. AnAmerican company called Head, which gained a considerable portion of the tennisconsumers by this time, introduced the first titanium racquet in 1991. Titanium, anextremely st...
