todays tennis players. BeforeWorld War II, tennis strings consisted of a highly strengthened and thin sailor rope, orsometimes even a pig skin rope. After the war, however, plastics made a great impact onthe tennis world. Up until the late 1970s, nylon strings have been used as the only typeof 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 coveredthe remaining 70 percent of the overall string. Wilson was the first to introduce anall-nylon string with kevlar coating around it. By applying a layer of kevlar onto thestring, Wilson almost tripled the life span of if its new tennis strings.Kevlar, however, had its disadvantages which made many players reluctant to useit. 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 morethan 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 fiveracquets was estimated to have an unevenly applied kevlar coating during that time.An Australian tennis company called Gamma, which focused on manufacturingtennis strings only, came up with the solution to this problem in 1985. By applyingkevlar over a nylon string and then wrapping it into another layer of nylon fibers, theracquets were vibration free, and had a longer lasting life at the same time. Gammawould further pioneer its research in the string business by introducing natural andsynthetic gut strings to the tennis market. Natural gut strings are made out of plasticwhich has been exposed to extensive melting. Synthetic gut strings go through the sameprocess but are also wrapped into multifiber threads which ensure longer lasting life andadd more spin when hitting the ball.Gamma did not have a ...
