Some considerations on ropes and their real value February 26, 2016 07:43

Taking advantage of the Christmas break, I scrolled through the USRSA rankings of the best-selling mono/co-polyester strings currently on the market.

I wondered if the reasons behind the preference for one model over another were objective (better materials, price, performance) or related to other factors. These factors could be: availability in stores, trends, top players who claim to use them...

Thanks to the support of tools from Eng. Medri of Pro-T-One, I viewed the responses that the most popular strings of the moment give when subjected to in-depth and objective laboratory tests.
The results were surprising in many cases...

Since the laboratory data didn't explain to me why an expensive string with average performance had more success than another model, which performed better and was less expensive, I thought that most consumers didn't have the sensitivity or technique to "feel" the different performances of the various stringings.

I then took as a reference the field tests of the largest online tennis store, TennisWarehouse USA. The TW testing team is made up of players who very well represent the "average" tennis player, i.e., the one who "moves" the most numbers in the sales rankings of tennis strings.

Even the published field test results, almost always in line with laboratory tests, did not give me the answer I was looking for. This was Engineer Medri's answer to my question:

"It seems clear to me that the solution to our doubts is very evident... The market offers a series of products without any certification, and the player's perception is preferentially and exclusively influenced by certain sensory and emotional elements. The player sponsoring the product, the color, and the brand are essential elements for the product's placement on the market, and partially but significantly, the opinions of certain "opinion leaders" who continuously and persistently move across forums and social media influence all of this.

What I want to say is that, first of all, there is a lack of a shared basis for judgment and a standard of comparison, partly due to major brands doing nothing in this direction, although my hope over time is to work to create a critical awareness in this regard.

Another element is that no brand offers serious and repeatable certification or evaluation tests to use for advertising and selling the product. A label with test results on the packaging wouldn't be a bad idea!"

Absolutely in line with this thinking, we decided to publish the laboratory test sheets of our strings, so that there can be objective data to motivate the choice of such an important product for our sport.

We hope that other companies will follow our example.

In the meantime, you can read the tests of the following strings:

Happy tennis!