The balls are made from cork and rackets are shaped more like a squash racket. The first steel racket was launched by Wilson in , the Wilson T was a major advancement in racket evolution. It was much stronger and lighter than the legacy wooden rackets. Jimmy Connors was the first big name to make the transition to steel rackets which helped them become mainstream.
As technology advanced manufacturers started using aluminium and graphite. Prince Classic and Prince Pro very quickly became top sellers. By , wooden rackets became obsolete. Tim Newcomb covers stadiums, sneakers and technology for Sports Illustrated.
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Home Tennis. SI Recommends. College Basketball. By Wilton Jackson. By Justin Barrasso. Wimbledon, the oldest tennis tournament, was founded in , and the first Australian Open was held in Through the application of advanced engineering, the tennis racquet has changed considerably since these early competitions, as detailed in a recent research article and summarised in the video below. Early tennis racquets borrowed their design from the older sport of real tennis, an early racket sport dating back to around the 16th century and played by the rich and elite.
They were made of wood, with long handles and small lopsided heads, which made it easier for the player to bring the hitting surface close to the ground to hit the typically low bouncing balls of real tennis. These soon disappeared as tennis developed as a sport in its own right. Symmetrical racket frames were becoming commonplace by the time of the first Australian Open.
Most manufacturers continued to make their racquets from wood until the s, with few other design developments seen. Some early tennis racquet manufacturers did produce metal frames to try and overcome the issue of wood warping due to humidity, but these were unsuccessful.
Not only does metal offer less damping than wood, meaning the player feels harsher vibrations if they mishit the ball, but the metal frame often damaged the natural gut strings at the point of contact.
The Dayton Steel Racket Corporation attempted the use of more durable metal strings , but these affected the felt cover on the ball and were prone to rusting. Most players tend to stick to a wider head but light and sloping frame, while others might favor heavier and more powerful tennis rackets. The average wooden racket was 67 square inches. This was the norm for a long time, until Howard Head popularized the first large racket in the s, at a whopping square inches.
The American tennis brand called Weed originally made the first large aluminum tennis racket in The market started increasing in regards to size once Howard Head created the square inch racket.
This has since gone down because of the rules around head size regulations, capping the maximum square inches at Tennis racket companies are currently suffering due to their quality of rackets being so high.
Someone who owns a graphite racket from 20 years ago might still be able to use it today without a need or want for another racket. This results in widespread innovation for tennis racket companies. Many companies are struggling to come up with new and exciting versions of their rackets to stay in business. For example, Dunlop was the first company to release a tennis racket that offers extra length.
All other companies also started to provide this shortly after. Head has recently come out with a piezoelectric material tennis racket, which allows the user to have a better hit.
When the ball comes into contact with the strings made of piezoelectric material , the energy that it creates is converted into electrical energy to dampen the vibration. This electric energy is then back to the piezoelectric ceramic composites in the frame, which then stiffens from the energy entering it.
So, is electricity in tennis rackets the next big thing? For more information on tennis rackets, be sure to check out our top 10 best tennis rackets. Facebook 0 Tweet 0 Pin 0. Table of Contents 1 Where did it Start?
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