Latest news with #racket
Forbes
15-07-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
New Wilson Ultra V5 Racket Enticing Host Of Professionals To Switch
The new Wilson Ultra V5 tennis racket. The new Wilson Ultra v5 tennis racket, launching July 15, already has something the previous versions haven't enjoyed: a host of top-level tour professionals switching to the Pro version of the frame. As Wilson continues to tweak the design of its flagship 'explosive power' frame, the Chicago-based brand has added new technologies designed to complement the modern game while introducing a range of rackets within the Ultra v5 line to appeal to a mix of players, including enticing Alex de Minaur, Qinwen Zheng and Marta Kostyuk to switch frames and join Maria Sakkari as Ultra players. 'The new Ultra v5 gives me a whole new level of confidence on court,' de Minaur says, 'the power and precision are another level.' Marta Kostyuk is switching to the Wilson Ultra v5 and will have a dress to match the racket's ... More colorway. The seven models of the new frame, which include the mainline 100 and the 99 Pro, along with two lightweight 100s, a 111 and two junior frames, 'is all about power for the aggressive baseliner,' David Packowitz, Wilson global product line manager for performance rackets, tells me. 'In v5, it was how do we deliver a better experience for those players and give them the ability to execute their game better?' MORE: Roger Federer And Wilson Launch RF Classics Rackets The answer focused on adapting to the modern game, which includes players hitting with more net clearance as they rely on additional spin, players being forced to hit shots from a greater variety of areas on the court, the need for increased shot variety—no longer is it just a serve and big forehand, but players are using chips, high balls, slices and more to set up the winner—and a fresh level of explosivity. 'We wanted to deliver a racket that allows players to accelerate and generate pace off slower balls," Packowitz adds. To make it happen, Wilson reengineered the internal layup of the carbon fiber with a 'tiny tweak' to the flexibility of the racket. While still a stiff power racket, Packowitz says, the result offers more pocketing in the Ultra v5 that offers additional access to control and power that helps keep the ball within the confines of a 78-foot-long tennis court. The change also increased the ability to shape shots, generate spin and create power on slower balls. Alex de Minaur is switching to the Wilson Ultra v5. Wilson, with two power-focused frames—the Ultra and Clash—comes about that power differently in each. The Clash is more flexible with a focus on comfortable power, while the Ultra offers a 'stiff, explosive power racket for the player who takes long cuts and wants something super stable.' Packowitz says both offer a focus on power—the Ultra offers more power than, for example, the Blade—but with a different feel. It's that classic stiffness that attracts elite level players. And now they have a model to fit their needs. MORE: Top-Selling Wilson Clash Racket Back For V3 Release The Ultra v5 features the 99 Pro, a version loaded with additional technology, including an 'elite power flex' that makes it the stiffest racket in the Wilson lineup. There's also a higher balance, meant for stability. The 99 Pro also tweaks the v5's dual tapered beam by creating it in a 'D' shape to make it even more maneuverable on fast swings. The 100 model features power grooves at the top of the hoop, while the 99 Pro moves them to all four corners for an 'explosive feel on contact.' While the 16x19 string pattern is the norm for the Ultra v5, the 99 Pro comes a 16x18 pattern to bring in an additional level of forgiveness and spin because of the racket's stiffness. The Ultra v5 100 weighs in at 300 grams, while the 99 Pro is at 305, making it easy to add weight to, if players want to customize. The power-focused Wilson Ultra v5 tennis racket. 'The 99 Pro is a new model at the top of the food chain in the franchise for the elite power aggressive baseliner,' Packowitz says. 'That is a racket that players are going to find wonders in, with tech that is special and important. It is cool to add to the line and players are asking when they can get their hands on it.' New tech also comes with new manufacturing. Packowitz says that while Wilson is always working to improve quality, the Ultra v5 shows a real step up in improved spec tolerance. 'It is something we are absolutely committed to,' he says about trying to create repeatability between racket specs. 'You are not going to get another racket that plays different but get something consistent.' The Wilson pledge starts with the Ultra v5, but Packowitz says spec tolerance will improve for every product cycle for each racket. Marta Kostyuk and her WIlson Ultra v5 tennis racket. To really accentuate the explosive power focus of the Ultra v5, Packowitz says the design team, along with the product development team, wanted to create a cosmetic that matched the performances. 'We kept coming back to this idea of a blue flame, the hottest part of the flame,' he says. Hence the 'electric indigo' color was born. 'It is bold, explosive and energetic,' he says. 'It is loved by our players.' Wilson will lean fully into the color—the 99 Pro comes in all gloss, while the other versions come in matte—thanks to a head-to-toe Electric Indigo look worn by Kostyuk, who will use the new racket with a matching Headliner Dress and Intrigue shoe. Wilson wants to make an explosive statement with the new Ultra v5. They have powerful stars backing it up. MORE: Wilson Expanding Tennis-Infused Lifestyle Sneaker Style MORE: Roger Federer Lists Most Iconic Rackets In Tennis History
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
How tennis stars get the rackets, strings and tensions they need for Wimbledon success
THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — On the first day of Wimbledon, Ed Day, a university student from just outside London, ran 17.5 kilometers across the All England Club. Those kilometers took him from the on-site stringing center, which is near the players' practice facility to various courts around the ground. His mission? Advertisement Delivering rackets to players who have requested a restring during their match. Day, who along with the other runners who are part of the Court Services team wears a high-visibility vest for the job, has to weave in and out of tennis fans to get where he is going as fast as he possibly can. He has just returned from a sprint to No. 3 Court, and will soon be back out in the heat dodging spectators with another racket in his hand. 'This one is for Anastasia Zakharova, that one's for Luciano Darderi,' he says. 'We have a special tunnel that gets us to No. 3 Court, but after that you are on your own with the masses.' Day worked at Wimbledon last year and says his highlight was delivering a racket to Emma Raducanu, whose coach for this edition, Mark Petchey, has just picked up three rackets ahead of her second-round match against Markéta Vondroušová. That's how the players get their rackets back. The runners also have to bring them for restringing in the first place. Each racket is logged by the strings required and the tension. The old strings will be cut off and a stringer will get to work. Advertisement On day one they had 50 restrings mid-match and 664 across the 256 players who needed them doing before or after matches. By the end of women's semifinal day, 6,400 rackets had passed through the stringing center, which is run by Babolat. Last year's total was 6,188. Twenty five stringers work on 23 machines, from 7 a.m. until shortly after play concludes for the day. Among those in the workshop on day three is Paul Skipp from Portsmouth. The 55-year-old has been stringing rackets since he was 18. This is his 20th time working at Wimbledon, and when finds him, he is in the middle of restringing the racket of American player Tommy Paul. 'I've strung for all the top names. I strung Andy Murray's racket for his first match at Wimbledon in 2005 and I strung Carlos Alcaraz for his first time at Wimbledon too. Advertisement 'I've strung a racket in probably 10-and-a-half minutes,' he says, calmly threading the string through. 'That's when it has come in from court and someone's asked for it really quickly. But normal time is around 17 minutes per racket. 'We try to keep the same stringer for each player, to be consistent. Players like that too especially if they need little changes to be made to tension. Most of the top players won't be demanding too much. You will actually get stranger requests from players who are maybe a little bit further down the rankings like where to tie knots or wanting the logo in a slightly different place.' Manuela Villa Topple knows all about the detailed levels of some requests. The 20-year-old is part of a small team who gives each and every racket their finishing touch by painting on a branded logo. 'After the rackets get strung, they bring it down to our station and we find the right stencil, the right color and we draw on the logos with solvent paint,' she says. Advertisement 'Sometimes they have two logos, two different colors depending on their sponsorship deals. We have to be very careful we don't get it wrong because if we do and it's a certain string type like natural gut [which is made from the intestines of cows] that racket has to be restrung entirely because we can't rub the ink off.' Tennis strings come in three main categories: natural gut; multifilament, which is synthetic but made up of thousands of fibres woven together per string; and polyester, which is a single fibre per string. Polyesters, and some multifilaments, come in different geometries; some have a rough surface for increased spin production. All strings come in different thicknesses: the thinner, the more powerful and comfortable; the thicker, the more controlled and durable. Natural gut is the most expensive, the most powerful, comfortable and plushest; polyester strings are cheaper and offer the most spin and control, but are less comfortable; multifilaments are somewhere in between. If these descriptions sound sweeping, that's because they are. Tennis players, from recreational to professional, are very particular about their strings. Some — including Roger Federer — will not string their racket with just one string, but two. This is a hybrid set-up, offering the benefits of two different types of string by putting one in the mains (the strings that run vertically, parallel to the racket handle) and the crosses (which run perpendicular to the mains.) Advertisement And once they have chosen their strings, they have to choose a tension. As with strings, there is a general range — between 21 kg (46 lbs) and 25 kg (55 lbs) — but some players are outliers. Adrian Mannarino of France plays down at 8.6 kg (19 lbs) on occasion, which is like playing with a trampoline. 'Forty pounds is about the max you can do,' Babolat employee Josh Newton explains while spinning a racket around. 'I'm not sure I've ever had anyone over 40 as that's the max for the machine. The tighter it is the less power off the racket but the ball comes off the strings faster. It has a sensation of popping off the strings but it has less velocity than if you string it looser. Looser is like a trampoline so it sinks in and then it bounces off.' Tension also needs to be adjusted to the weather. In the heat of the early rounds and the semifinals, players will have strung slightly tighter to mitigate the increased liveliness of the balls and the grass. They will have several rackets in their bag during matches, strung at different tensions with half a pound or a pound between them. Advertisement 'They're usually in batches of 12 maybe every few months they change them because of the constant hitting and restringing which will affect the racket a little bit as well,' Skipp says. 'The heat will have affected them here. The players may find they need more rackets, with tension in the strings dropping quicker.' They will also customize their stencils. Red, black and white are the three main colors, but last year's women's singles champion, Barbora Krejčíková, likes to use silver on her Head racket. She takes her own silver paint with her to each tournament. When British duo Eden Silva and Joshua Paris paired up in the mixed doubles they both went logo-free which is rare. Iga Świątek, who will play Amanda Anisimova in the women's final, likes to have her Tecnifibre logo painted as low down on her racket as possible, while Kateřina Siniaková, who won the mixed doubles with partner Sem Verbeek, always wants her red Wilson logo to be painted from the fourth string from the top rather than the fifth. 'She came in and said: 'I know it sounds crazy but for me that just works.' Apparently she can see when the logo's wearing off more when it's on the fourth string but for some it is superstition too,' says Villa Topple, whose highlight has been adding logos to fellow Italian and men's world No. 1 Jannik Sinner's racket. Advertisement 'We try to help the player every time. If they have a special request we will try to do it,' says Eric Ferrazzi, head of racket service for Babolat. The stringing center serves over 700 players at Wimbledon and has been doing so since the company took over the racket services in 2022. Not all players will use the service here: seven-time Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic uses a private stringer. With just four singles matches left, the organized chaos of the early rounds has given way to a calmer environment. But Day and his hi-vis will still be ready to run, just in case one of the remaining stars needs a racket with which to play the biggest point of their career. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Sports Business, Culture, Tennis, Women's Tennis 2025 The Athletic Media Company
New York Times
11-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
How tennis stars get the rackets, strings and tensions they need for Wimbledon success
THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — On the first day of Wimbledon, Ed Day, a university student from just outside London, ran 17.5 kilometers across the All England Club. Those kilometers took him from the on-site stringing center, which is near the players' practice facility to various courts around the ground. Advertisement His mission? Delivering rackets to players who have requested a restring during their match. Day, who along with the other runners who are part of the Court Services team wears a high-visibility vest for the job, has to weave in and out of tennis fans to get where he is going as fast as he possibly can. He has just returned from a sprint to No. 3 Court, and will soon be back out in the heat dodging spectators with another racket in his hand. 'This one is for Anastasia Zakharova, that one's for Luciano Darderi,' he says. 'We have a special tunnel that gets us to No. 3 Court, but after that you are on your own with the masses.' Day worked at Wimbledon last year and says his highlight was delivering a racket to Emma Raducanu, whose coach for this edition, Mark Petchey, has just picked up three rackets ahead of her second-round match against Markéta Vondroušová. That's how the players get their rackets back. The runners also have to bring them for restringing in the first place. Each racket is logged by the strings required and the tension. The old strings will be cut off and a stringer will get to work. On day one they had 50 restrings mid-match and 664 across the 256 players who needed them doing before or after matches. By the end of women's semifinal day, 6,400 rackets had passed through the stringing center, which is run by Babolat. Last year's total was 6,188. Twenty five stringers work on 23 machines, from 7 a.m. until shortly after play concludes for the day. Among those in the workshop on day three is Paul Skipp from Portsmouth. The 55-year-old has been stringing rackets since he was 18. This is his 20th time working at Wimbledon, and when The Athletic finds him, he is in the middle of restringing the racket of American player Tommy Paul. 'I've strung for all the top names. I strung Andy Murray's racket for his first match at Wimbledon in 2005 and I strung Carlos Alcaraz for his first time at Wimbledon too. Advertisement 'I've strung a racket in probably 10-and-a-half minutes,' he says, calmly threading the string through. 'That's when it has come in from court and someone's asked for it really quickly. But normal time is around 17 minutes per racket. 'We try to keep the same stringer for each player, to be consistent. Players like that too especially if they need little changes to be made to tension. Most of the top players won't be demanding too much. You will actually get stranger requests from players who are maybe a little bit further down the rankings like where to tie knots or wanting the logo in a slightly different place.' Manuela Villa Topple knows all about the detailed levels of some requests. The 20-year-old is part of a small team who gives each and every racket their finishing touch by painting on a branded logo. 'After the rackets get strung, they bring it down to our station and we find the right stencil, the right color and we draw on the logos with solvent paint,' she says. 'Sometimes they have two logos, two different colors depending on their sponsorship deals. We have to be very careful we don't get it wrong because if we do and it's a certain string type like natural gut [which is made from the intestines of cows] that racket has to be restrung entirely because we can't rub the ink off.' Tennis strings come in three main categories: natural gut; multifilament, which is synthetic but made up of thousands of fibres woven together per string; and polyester, which is a single fibre per string. Polyesters, and some multifilaments, come in different geometries; some have a rough surface for increased spin production. All strings come in different thicknesses: the thinner, the more powerful and comfortable; the thicker, the more controlled and durable. Natural gut is the most expensive, the most powerful, comfortable and plushest; polyester strings are cheaper and offer the most spin and control, but are less comfortable; multifilaments are somewhere in between. Advertisement If these descriptions sound sweeping, that's because they are. Tennis players, from recreational to professional, are very particular about their strings. Some — including Roger Federer — will not string their racket with just one string, but two. This is a hybrid set-up, offering the benefits of two different types of string by putting one in the mains (the strings that run vertically, parallel to the racket handle) and the crosses (which run perpendicular to the mains.) And once they have chosen their strings, they have to choose a tension. As with strings, there is a general range — between 21 kg (46 lbs) and 25 kg (55 lbs) — but some players are outliers. Adrian Mannarino of France plays down at 8.6 kg (19 lbs) on occasion, which is like playing with a trampoline. 'Forty pounds is about the max you can do,' Babolat employee Josh Newton explains while spinning a racket around. 'I'm not sure I've ever had anyone over 40 as that's the max for the machine. The tighter it is the less power off the racket but the ball comes off the strings faster. It has a sensation of popping off the strings but it has less velocity than if you string it looser. Looser is like a trampoline so it sinks in and then it bounces off.' Tension also needs to be adjusted to the weather. In the heat of the early rounds and the semifinals, players will have strung slightly tighter to mitigate the increased liveliness of the balls and the grass. They will have several rackets in their bag during matches, strung at different tensions with half a pound or a pound between them. 'They're usually in batches of 12 maybe every few months they change them because of the constant hitting and restringing which will affect the racket a little bit as well,' Skipp says. 'The heat will have affected them here. The players may find they need more rackets, with tension in the strings dropping quicker.' They will also customize their stencils. Red, black and white are the three main colors, but last year's women's singles champion, Barbora Krejčíková, likes to use silver on her Head racket. She takes her own silver paint with her to each tournament. When British duo Eden Silva and Joshua Paris paired up in the mixed doubles they both went logo-free which is rare. Iga Świątek, who will play Amanda Anisimova in the women's final, likes to have her Tecnifibre logo painted as low down on her racket as possible, while Kateřina Siniaková, who won the mixed doubles with partner Sem Verbeek, always wants her red Wilson logo to be painted from the fourth string from the top rather than the fifth. Advertisement 'She came in and said: 'I know it sounds crazy but for me that just works.' Apparently she can see when the logo's wearing off more when it's on the fourth string but for some it is superstition too,' says Villa Topple, whose highlight has been adding logos to fellow Italian and men's world No. 1 Jannik Sinner's racket. 'We try to help the player every time. If they have a special request we will try to do it,' says Eric Ferrazzi, head of racket service for Babolat. The stringing center serves over 700 players at Wimbledon and has been doing so since the company took over the racket services in 2022. Not all players will use the service here: seven-time Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic uses a private stringer. With just four singles matches left, the organized chaos of the early rounds has given way to a calmer environment. But Day and his hi-vis will still be ready to run, just in case one of the remaining stars needs a racket with which to play the biggest point of their career.
