Ivan Lendl 8 knot-string
 

Hi,

I saw a picture where Ivan Lendl uses a Bosworth racket with 8 knots and a black and a white string.

This is no classic hybrid string, but only the middle mains and crosses are black (Poly) and the rest are white ones (Natural Gut?)

Does anyone have a clue what kind of string Ivan is playing there and what are his expectations from that string?

Best regards,

Howy

He is using Tecnifibre Black Code in the middle mains and middle crosses with natural gut in the outer strings.

Wowser
 

That is soooo eastern european..too bad he lives in Greewich Connecticut

it looks kind of funny:

Gives him a target on the stringbed?

Good grief, that's weird looking. WTF, does he want natty gut for only off-center hits??

I'm actually kind of curious how this is done, and what benefits this stringing would give someone??

I think he wants to play with poly but doesn't want to feel it on off center hits. I wonder if the octagonal shape of the bosworth allows the structural integrity of the frame to be unaffected by this unusual string job.

lendl also used to have saw dust in his pockets...

he's not a normal character!

out of all the racquets he could choose, he chooses teh ugliest one of the lot, with a weird string job..

Do you think that the black square in the center might be painted?

Optispot
 

Looks like the Optispot by Völkl in a square version...

Hope somebody can explain the benefits, if any.

I just saw Lendl play this setup on TV. It seems like you could do this with 2 pieces of string, but the middle strings (the black ones) would probably use a length of string well over the normal half-set of 20 feet. Has anyone tried it and measured what is needed? I envision doing the inside 10 mains, ending at the top, then start your white crosses up top before you go back to the black string to do the crosses starting with the 4th cross.with the white string you could run the top 3 crosses, followed by the left outside mains, then botoom crosses and finally the right side mains.
It is so weird that it makes me want to try it, though it probably sucks and shouldn't be tried more than once. Also, it makes me feel some degree of pain for my racquet to go through such a process. Probably low tension would be a good idea for a first run.

Looks weird from that angle, kind of a kaleidoscope type of thing (did I spell that corectly?)

Well, he is creative, at least that.:)

I would have nightmares just by having to look that weird string setup.

Dont worry he moved up to Goshen, CT and spends a lot of time in Vero.

looks cool and worth a try..... considering hes one of those "tennis nut jobs" in the sense that they think about every little detail there is, Im sure theres some logic for it, I specially lean to follow what Dropthebaseline says, about not wanting to feel poly on off center hits

Could he be trying to make the poly last longer by suspending the outer poly strings in gut? The way he has it set up, his sweet spot is all poly. Poly performance w/ gut longevity?

i think he's very utilitarian. it's not a bad trait to have. it's good to see pros tinkering around with their set up.

I think Lendl's setup is very clever. Using natural gut outside the center would both improve power in the center of the strings and really improve power outside the center. The central section of copoly would still be able to slide and snapback for extra spin and the whole thing would be more comfortable than a full bed of copoly. I wonder who's stringing those for him.