Tennis technology article

[gzhpcu]

More on the racket here: http://www.80s-tennis.com/pages/vils...r-fischer.html

[stotty]

Another good find, Phil.

Seems the racket gained acceptance at local level yet had trouble hitting the pro market. When it finally made it in the hands of Nastase it was banned very shortly after. One can easily imagine Nastase as a player who could make full use of the racket. Interesting that he initially declared he would never use such a racket as it was "beneath his dignity". Yet the rascal couldn't resist the temptation to take Vilas down with it! And Vilas, despite being "unbeatable in practice" with the racket, couldn't bring himself to use it on the tour.

The most compelling thought to come out of this thread is the one I referred to earlier. What would the game be like today had the spaghetti racket been voted legal? It might have changed the face of tennis for years and subsequent innovations would have followed a very defensive direction. Tennis today might be totally different as a result.

It's a bit like thinking what the world would be like today had Hitler won WW2.

Stotty

[gzhpcu]

Think it would have made tennis immensely boring. The game would have become a lot slower, since the ball had no penetration just a lot of spin. Just heavy topspin by brushing up almost vertically on the ball to make it loop very high and long. No comparison with copoly. Copoly gives more spin, but you can hit aces and flat strokes, all impossible with the spaghetti strings.