'It's a different world.' Who strings the racquets at Cincinnati Open tennis tournament?

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5 days ago

MASON, OH − During the qualifying rounds of the Cincinnati Open, one WTA player sent her racquets to the stringing room to be re-strung. Simple enough, right?
The only problem? It was during her match.
The other problem? The stringers did not have her type of string.
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"We call it an 'on court.' It's of utmost urgency," Priority One founder and owner Nate Ferguson said. "She hadn't dropped off any string and didn't play with the most popular strings out there. It's chaos."
Ferguson eventually got in touch with her coach, who instructed him to use a popular brand of string that was in stock.
The stringers jumped into action, fast-tracking the process of cutting out the old strings, removing them, adding the new strings to the desired tension, straightening the strings and stenciling the racquet, all within a few minutes.
Ferguson's company, Priority One, is a premium racquet service company that serves as the on-site racquet service provider for the Cincinnati Open.
With the Cincinnati Open expanding into a two-week event this summer, Ferguson slightly overstaffed his stringing room to keep up demand. That includes Cincinnati native Drew Violette, of Next Level Stringing, who has strung for eight different area clubs.
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Violette outlined the difference between stringing at a local club vs. an ATP/WTA 1000 tournament.
"A good service around the local area would be 24-48 hours to get a racquet done," Violette said. "This week, I've done well over 200 racquets. We have to manage our mornings and evenings very well."
Stringers are tasked with completing up to 30 racquets per day, with the majority of volume early in the tournament before players are eliminated.
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All WTA and ATP players have a preference for their racquets. Professionals must precisely dial in how much power comes off the racquet with each swing. While the weight, balance, swing weight, grip size and length doesn't change, the difference comes in the string tensions, which varies based on altitude, temperature and court surface. A tight string equals control, a loose string equals power.
Players travel with reels of their desired string, typically natural gut or polyester, to tournaments. Those reels are provided to Ferguson's team, who string the racquet to the players' desire.
"There are a million ways to ruin a racquet by stringing them incorrectly. I'd argue it's the most important thing," Ferguson said. "It's a different level of pressure."
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'I've been doing it ever since.'
There's no exact numbers of racquets used by each player during a tournament. Ferguson stopped mid-interview to help Frances Tiafoe's coach, David Witt, who was dropping off his fifth and final racquet for his Aug. 13 match. Ben Shelton had 10 racquets available for his match the same day.
It's all part of Priority One's Gold Service, which provides unlimited stringing for a flat fee. For Ferguson and Ron Yu, who began stringing in 1986, previous customers included Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and John Isner, among others.
Ferguson graduated from SMU in 1986 and took a job stringing racquets shortly after. When he moved to Florida, Ferguson began stringing for an up-and-coming tennis star named Pete Sampras, who was particular about how his racquet was strung with 122-gauge gut strings.
Sampras became the No. 1 player in the world and took Ferguson with him on tour, where Ferguson began to build relationships with fellow stringers, building the base of his future business.
"I didn't want to get a job in real estate or computers. I knew a guy who did this," Ferguson explained. "I took a summer off and started stringing. I've been doing it ever since."
'It's a different world.'
Plenty of people can string a tennis racquet. Not many can show up every day at a tournament at 7:30 a.m. and string until the final match of the day under the pressures from the top players in the world.
"It's abusive. It's stressful. It's a different world," Ferguson said.
It's a thankless job, but that's part of the business. Ferguson's team didn't have many demands, just air conditioning, which was happily met as part of the Cincinnati Open's $260 million facelift over the last year.
Under the cool air and the bright lights, Ferguson's group, which he speculates could be one of the oldest stringing rooms out there, operates under pressure like a well-oiled machine, filled with hard work, stories and jokes.
"We all work well together," Ferguson said. "If you get guys who work well together and are good stringers like I have, it can be fun. It's more like a family."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Behind the scenes with the Cincinnati Open tennis racquet stringers