stringbed & contact article

[jimleto]

I would like to be able to see where the ball is being hit with each contact. Could the off center hits be mis-hits? Does the tip or throat contact change with shot direction? Thanks!

[johnyandell]

You can tell in some of the hits in the high speed archives which direction the ball is going. There are hundreds there. My personal opinion is that nobody has that kind of control. Tip for one direction, throat for another etc. That is going to be more a function of the angle of the overall racket head. BUT do some research and report back if you find some corelations.

It's a great question with the modern rackets just what constitutes a "misshit". You can be a little off and still get a great response. I don't think the tendency toward the tip could be chance, especially for Djok.

Again if you go thru the archives you'll see when the off center contact tilts the racket head forward or back. I think that's probably the line. A half inch this way or that is probably still optimum in terms of the string response. If it's off far enough to really disrupt the plane of the racket, that's probably a misshit.

[dimitrios]

Why I try to hit just "up" from the sweet-spot

I've found that hitting the ball just "up" from the center of the sweet-spot -- i.e., closer to the tip -- gives me a perfect coupling of power and control.

I've also found that the bulk of my mishits are closer to the throat of the racket. (This is of course more pronounced when my nerves are on edge and my feet aren't working as well as they should -- e.g., in certain match situations.) By consciously trying to get to this spot just up from the sweet spot, I either get that spot or -- if I err -- just below it, which is in fact the sweet spot proper. This helps my ball striking consistency tremendously.

I doubt that's why any pro would do it, but that's what seems to work for me.

[giancarlo]

Federer's Sweetspot

Found this in an article on Nate Ferguson (from Priority 1 stringing). He too, confirmed that the sweetspot for most pro players is not in the dead center of the racquet. The stringers have an intersting point of view, since they can see the physical proof of where the pros make contact, judging by the broken string and wear and tear on the entire stringbed.

...regardless of tension, each of Federer's racquets was strung with 1.30mm Babolat VS Natural Gut in the mains and 1.25mm Luxilon ALU Rough in the cross strings. Each strung racquet had a total of 10 string savers inserted, in a crisscross pattern across the five center main strings and the fourth and sixth cross strings. Although these string savers may seem to be inserted a little high and out of the racquet's sweetspot, Ferguson said that most pros tend to hit high up in the stringbed.

[TheWatcher]

I just posted something about this and now I have an answer. This is great. I wonder if Nate thinks the players know this or do it by feel?

[GeoffWilliams]

Here is the proof: Feds' string a lings