Gauge: 16g, 17g Price: $17.45 (sets), $157.05 (360-foot reel) Type: Co-polyester Composition: A mix of a heavier, stiffer polyester (black) with a softer co-poly core (red). NTRP: 3.5-7.0
Observations:
—Launched in March, the Gamma Zo Verve aims to diminish the arm-jarring effects of some polyester strings by blending harder-edge black polyester—for durability and spin—with a softer co-poly red core—for feel and comfort. —This co-poly is kinder and gentler on the arm, enabling you to play a full set of the string without mixing it with gut or a multi-filament string. —The string effectively grabs the ball and offers an abundance of spin potential. —Playtesters praised its durability.
Bottom Line: Baseline grinders, heavy topspin players and aggressive baseliners adept at changing direction should benefit from this string. It's not as harsh on the arm as some polyester strings and there wasn't a significant tension reduction during playtesting. Heavy hitters reported a good balance of power and spin.
TENNIS racquet advisor Bruce Levine is a former touring pro who has coached on both the men’s and women’s tours. Bruce is the general manager of Courtside Racquet Club in Lebanon, N.J., has worked as a full-time teaching pro for 30 years and lectures nationally on racquets and equipment.
Gauge: 16g (sets and reels), 17g (sets and reels) Price: $19.95 (sets), $259.95 (reel) Type: Multifilament Composition: Pure DuPont PA66 multi-filament central core; fibers bonded with thermo elastic PU resin; super-bonded polymer outer coating. NTRP: 2.0-7.0
Observations:
—As its name suggests, the Dunlop Silk is easy on the arm and provided ample power for playtesters of all skill levels. —An ideal string for all-court players, serve-and-volleyers and aggressive baseliners. —Did not offer the spin potential of polyester strings, however this is a softer string and is not designed for such use. —A versatile, comfortable string that can be blended with polyester or used on its own.
Bottom Line: If you're looking for a multifilament string that places a premium on power and comfort, the Dunlop Silk delivers in both areas. Though no multifilament string can completely replicate gut, the Silk does offer some gut-like characteristics at a lower cost. Durability is a concern: Some playtesters experienced breakage after two weeks of play, so proceed with caution. But the string is very gentle on the arm and elbow and appealed to a wide-range of playtesters, particularly all-courters who change speeds on their shots.
TENNIS racquet advisor Bruce Levine is a former touring pro who has coached on both the men’s and women’s tours. Bruce is the general manager of Courtside Racquet Club in Lebanon, N.J., has worked as a full-time teaching pro for 30 years and lectures nationally on racquets and equipment.
—This is a soft, pliable string and is a good choice for players experiencing arm or elbow issues. —All-court players, attacking players and flat-ball hitters will benefit most from this string; play testers praised its power potential. —Tecnifibre has added a silicone anti-abrasion coating to the string, designed to enhance durability. —Play testers who hit with heavy topspin noted discernible string movement; if you do the same or break strings easily, you may want to consider blending this string.
Bottom Line: Technifibre continues its tradition of producing quality string with the TGV, one of the brand's most comfortable offerings. TGV incorporates 45 percent polyurethane, which makes it one of the softest strings we've tested this year and ideal for players with tennis elbow or arm issues. Formerly known as Tecnifibre 515 in the U.S. (it has long been branded Tecnifibre TGV internationally), the string provided power for players of various styles with minimal vibration.
TENNIS racquet advisor Bruce Levine is a former touring pro who has coached on both the men’s and women’s tours. Bruce is the general manager of Courtside Racquet Club in Lebanon, N.J., has worked as a full-time teaching pro for 30 years and lectures nationally on racquets and equipment.
Bjorn Borg was world No. 1 when he outdueled John McEnroe in their epic 1980 Wimbledon final, but it was a slugging New York No. 3 who helped shape the stoic Swede’s iconic image.
The famed pinstriped Fila polo Borg wore that day was inspired by one of the most well-known set of pinstripes in sport. Fila designer Pierluigi Rolando looked to Babe Ruth's New York Yankees uniform when he created the shirt that would become one of tennis’ top apparel treasures.
Thirty-one years have passed since Borg dropped to his knees after capturing his fifth Wimbledon crown. These days, the Angelic Assassin appears behind the glass at the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum in Newport, Rhode Island. His cream-colored polo is a centerpiece of the new Fila exhibit currently on display. The exhibit, which will be updated with new pieces throughout the coming year (for a total of four different exhibits over the next 12 months), celebrates the centennial anniversary of the Italian brand that has been worn by Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, Guillermo Vilas, Adriano Panatta (the only man to beat Borg at Roland Garros), Boris Becker, Monica Seles, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Kim Clijsters. The initial exhibit, “the White Line,” highlights Fila's first tennis collection and uses sketches from Rolando’s sketch book to illustrate how he designed Borg's classic shirt, as well as his designs for Panatta.
“From Borg's Wimbledon victories to Seles' French Open title, Fila has been an integral partner in great moments in tennis history, and we are pleased to celebrate their milestone anniversary by showcasing the brand's rich history to our visitors,” International Tennis Hall of Fame CEO Mark Stenning says.
The special exhibit was unveiled last month and drew the attention of fans and notable family members visiting the museum last week for Andre Agassi’s Hall of Fame induction. It also features a limited-edition Fila wood racquet, the white, pink and purple outfit Monica Seles wore when she won her first French Open title in 1990, a polo shirt belonging to Becker, and the first polo designed for Panatta. There's video highlights of Clijsters in action, too, along with two championship Fila outfits: the red and blue top and skirt she wore en route to the 2009 U.S. Open title, and the all-green outfit she donned Down Under this January, when tennis' top working mom won her first Australian Open. That ensemble paid tribute to the apparel Aussie Hall of Famer Goolagong-Cawley wore during a major title run of her own.
“When we spoke to Kim about doing a commemorative collection for her, the idea of Evonne Goolagong-inspired apparel appealed as a way to connect one Grand Slam champion mom to another," said Fila global marketing manager Lauren Mallon. “They’ve both been great ambassadors for Fila and we felt it was a fantastic way to honor Fila’s rich tennis history.”
If you can’t make it to the Hall of Fame, you can experience the exhibit by visiting Fila.com and clicking on the brand’s 100th anniversary microsite, which offers a photographic history of the brand that began as a textile company founded by the Fila brothers. The site is interactive and can be your call to action on Fila's greatest hits and misses over the years: you can vote on whether you’d wear the featured clothes on court today.
This weekend’s highly anticipated Davis Cup quarterfinal between the host United States and Spain is more than a meeting of nations who have combined to capture three of the last four titles. It’s a science project.
USTA high performance coaches will convene in Austin, Texas this weekend for a seminar on using technology to build better tennis players. It may sound like tennis is taking a cue from Terminator films; in reality it’s a case of the sport getting up to speed with baseball and football in using video-tagging technology to analyze patterns of play. The USTA has partnered with Dartfish, a Windows-based software program producer, to analyze tactical tendencies of its elite junior and pro players. Dave Ramos, USTA coordinator for coaching education and sports science, will meet with about 20 high-performance coaches to analyze the Davis Cup matches and detail how Dartfish can help player development efforts.
"The old way of thinking about video analysis was working exclusively on players’ technique," Ramos says. "We still use video for the technical aspect, but using tagging with Dartfish enables us to extract tendencies of play during a course of the match."
Dartfish has worked with the International Tennis Federation, the French Tennis Federation, the Swiss Tennis Federation, Tennis Canada, the Argentine Tennis Federation, the USPTA, IMG Academies as well as several Major League Baseball teams. Coaches videotape matches and use the tagging software, which starts a timer at the beginning of the match, to timestamp key performance indicators. For instance, a coach could tag all second serves a player hits in a match, or tag all break points.
"Players and coaches don't want to sit and watch a three-hour videotape right after a match, and if you wait too long the benefit [of video] is largely lost," Ramos says. "But if I said, 'Let's take 10 minutes and watch the key performance indicator points of a match,' we could review those critical match moments in 15 minutes and both the players and coaches are much more likely to watch it.
"We just ordered kits for our national coaches so the coaches can travel with a small hard drive and camera. They mount the camera on the back face and use their iPhone or iPad to tag the match, and sit down to discuss the patterns and defining moments five or 10 minutes after the match, when it’s still fresh for the player.”
Dartfish's tennis software is designed to help coaches and players accurately analyze match-defining moments, to illustrate what patterns a player favored on pivotal points—and determine if those patterns were successful. Sometimes, a player's post-match perception of point construction can be skewed.
"We tagged Andy Roddick's match versus Marcos Baghdatis at the Australian Open," says Warren Pretorius, Dartfish manager of tennis and a USPTA master professional. "When Roddick was serving on the 30-all points, we found his first-serve percentage was 75 percent, his average first-serve speed was 125 mph or higher, and he served down the T 86 percent of the time. Tagging showed Roddick was losing a little more than 50 percent of those points serving down the T, whereas in the 14 percent of the points he served out wide, he won every point. After the match, Andy was asked about his serve and he said he thought he was mixing it up well. It’s amazing how often players will resort to the same tendencies when under stress—they do what they’re most comfortable doing in those moments. A recent study on match charting shows that often what players and coaches think they are doing is not actually always happening, so that's why the ability to chart and review those match-defining moments can be so helpful."
Cost of the Dartfish software starts at around $1,000, with additional fees if Dartfish tags and does the analysis for an organization.
"We lease the software as well and offer a service model where we will do the tagging and analysis,” Pretorius says. “For instance, we’re doing the full service for all of the Nike tennis camps.”
In a global game where some coaches do not always travel to all tournaments, coach and player can still jointly analyze matches using Dartfish. The USTA has created Dartfish TV video accounts for its high-performance coaches and elite players who attend USTA regional training centers, enabling both to review matches. The technology can be used to review past performances and help players prepare for future matches.
“If one of our coaches wants his player to try to develop patterns similar to John Isner, we can create a video of Isner’s patterns, post it to the player’s Dartfish account and the player receives an email alert that the video is available,” Ramos says. “Then the player can see a series of patterns and mimic those. If Jose Higueras wants to review the importance of recognition and anticipation, I can pull a bunch of points and put them together to illustrate exactly what he’s teaching."
Isner says his coach will sometimes use the technology to reinforce his need to apply unrelenting pressure on opponents.
"My coach gets the videos and he’ll look it over and when he thinks I need to see something he’ll have me look at it as well, and that’s why I bring him on the road—he’s great," Isner says. "In my case, it’s not necessarily tendencies we’re looking at. It’s more playing the right way at the right time. There’s a lot of times I’ll just play too passive and since I’m not going to play defense as well as most guys can, I can’t get away with passive play. I gotta play more aggressive and sometimes [seeing the video] of those key points is a good reminder of that."
In other words, the tennis player’s traditional post-match activities—stretching, icing, rehydrating and texting results to family and friends—may well increasingly include firing up the laptop to see where things went right—or wrong.
Grand Slam champions will loom as large as the Green Lantern when Breakfast at Wimbledon becomes a big-screen, 3D feast this weekend.
For the first time, the Wimbledon finals will be presented in 3D in select theaters nationwide, as the grass-court Grand Slam celebrates its 125th anniversary in Sony Digital 4K Cinemas. Nearly 50 movie theaters from Los Angeles to Long Island will show the finals; to watch, it will cost you between $15 to $18, depending on the theater.
Will fans accustomed to watching tennis in HD from the comfort of their couches be willing to spend the money? Execs from NCM Fathom, who is producing the event with SuperVision Media and Sony, and has staged showings of opera, ballet and Broadway shows in 3D, believe presenting The Championships in 3D will command box office clout.
"For the first time ever, fans will be able to experience tennis as though they were at Wimbledon,” says Dan Diamond, vice president of the Colorado-based NCM Fathom. “The cameras have been specially positioned to maximize the 3D experience in theaters. Fans will feel as though they are at Centre Court and experience the speed and action of the match just like the players themselves.”
In addition to offering a Wimbledon view so vivid you can see the Slazenger stamp on the ball, Fathom is also banking on the fact that some fans enjoy sharing the excitement and energy of the finals with others as a potential draw.
“Our hope is to provide a new experience for those fans to experience events in a new and different way,” Diamond says. “Our events often sell out in theaters in select markets and we hope tennis fans invite friends to experience Wimbledon in 3D in their local movie theater for the first time.”
Of course, the early-morning start time of both finals—9 a.m. ET—may be too alarming for some fans to trek to the local multiplex, but organizers claim the core target audience will rise for the occasion.
“We have seen that fans of live events want to see them as they happen,” Diamond says. “For our Met performances, audiences lined up at 8:30 a.m. in the Pacific time zone for a 10 a.m. event just to sit together. Tennis fans love this historic, annual event, and getting to the theater early will ensure they don’t miss it.”
For more information and a list of participating movie theaters, click here. If you can't get to a theater, the Wimbledon 3D experience is also available on the small screen: ESPN 3D will show its first tennis match with the Jo-Wilfried Tsonga vs. Novak Djokovic semifinal on Friday at 7:45 a.m., and will air both semifinals later that day. Cliff Drysdale and Brad Gilbert will be on the call for both matches. On Monday, July 4, the network will show both finals in the morning, with reairs later in the day.
For a behind-the-scenes view of the Sony team producing the finals in 3D, check out this video.
