Classic METAL Racquets Thread - ALUMINIUM to TENSILIUM
 

I thought maybe classic METAL racquets deserved their own thread:)

So I reckon it all started here in about 1925 with the Birmal!

Made in Birmingham England and made of Aluminium:)

Not sure of the year of this one in the late 70's, someone will know:)

It's the Slazenger X10, made of Tensilium!



It was used by Manuel Orantes!



You can see Borg thinking "Why are you about to use that awful new metal racquet against me, and it doesn't matter as you'll lose anyway" LOL

Some close-ups of the Slazenger X10, made of Tensilium:)

I don't have any pics, but classics from my youth -

The green Yonex/Yoneyama YY ???
Slazengers Panther
Dunlop's Volley
Slazengers Challenge X-2 (I think)
The Princes (especially the Mag Pro)
and - Head made a beautiful stick in the mid 80's but i can't put my finger on its name. Tournament Edge perhaps?

I don't remember the metals being around for very long - but they were great fun to play with.

All cool racquets, I reckon:)

The metals weren't around for long really. Basically the 70's as far as being popular. They were around before and after, but the metal racquets had their day mainly in the 70's!

Like I said in another thread though, as far as UK was concerned the metals were never anywhere near the dominant type of racquet. In the 70's wood still was the main racquet and that went to graphite in the early 80's quite quickly!

So metal in the UK didn't get much of a look in, and were quite rare to find sometimes! I think that's why I like them so much now:)

Let's not forget the Wilson T and TX series rackets.

Absolutely, the steel classics from the late 60's and 70's:)

This is gpt's great photo montage of the Wilson T2000, also showing the original Lacoste version!

And here's the Aluminium original Weed:)

It's about 140sqin!

(My photo doesn't do it justice unfortunately)

How about a T2000 with some spaghetti ...

http://www.woodtennis.com/strings/t2000pasta.jpg

I've got a wilson t3000 and a Chemold Rocket

Cool!!! Never seen that one before.

Superb Joe:)

Have you played with it?

(And love the fact the photo is called "T2000Pasta":)

Would like to see a photo of the Chemold Rocket:)

Yes, I did take it out for a hit and as advertised, the ball took all kinds of crazy flight paths. I did not hit for too long since I wanted to keep this extremely labor intensive string job intact as a show piece.

I have a few diff metals pictured at this page:

http://www.woodtennis.com/newMetal/newMetal.html

and a laver chemold at this page:

http://www.woodtennis.com/laver/

and how about the rosewall seamco:

http://www.woodtennis.com/rosewall/seamco_rosewall1.jpg

another classic metal is the gonzales spalding smasher:

http://www.woodtennis.com/panchogonz...s3racketsa.jpg

and the newk tiebreaker:

http://www.woodtennis.com/newcombe/

I'll post when I get a chance :D

Is this it ? http://www.woodtennis.com/laver/chemoldlaver1.jpg

Here's a good one!

A Slazenger Titanium XL:)

I've got a never-strung w/tag Slaz Ti coming any day! I was not aware of this model when it was 'current' (?). Not sure if I will string it or not...might be fun to add to the hitting collection.

One challenge I'm having is taking out all these itty-bitty rackets in our never-ending 25mph+ winds !!! Makes chasing that ball quite a task! :)

I hear you. Texas is quite a windy place this time of year. What's fun is hitting a lob straight up in the wind and watching land three courts away.