Quote:
Originally Posted by scotus
Sorry to bring back up this slightly dated thread.
But it seems that Dunlop Black Widow has been retested by TW University, and different numbers are showing with the new stiffness rating much higher than before.
With medium tension and medium swing speed, I am getting the stiffness of 220 for the 16 gauge.
Even on the arm-friendliness ranking, Black Widow seems to have gone down quite a bit with stiffness rated at 193.
Does anyone know whether Black Widow has been reformulated recently? Or how else to interpret this change?
|
This is why I don't treat lab data as an absolute. You change the methodology or the testing equipment, and you'll get different results. You also need to bear in mind that TW data often throws up quite a few anomalies. In the 'spin potential' section for example, the number data suggests (wrongly) that various synthetic guts produce more spin potential than numerous well known polys including Alu Rough, BHBR etc. Anyone who's played with those strings know that that's simply not the case.
Black Widow is a very comfortable, soft, super arm friendly poly. That's all I can say. It also plays and performs well in addition to arm comfort.
And lets not forget that TW's Andy Gerst had to up the tension noticeably before he got a tension that he preferred. You simply wouldn't do that if it was a stiff poly. And that's real world testing - which is what we're really interested in - and his comments about string comfort, super soft, super comfortbale, a 'poly for the people' etc. And let's not forget that this is a guy who was rated around ATP#1400 last year - he's no mickey mouse player we're talking about here.
http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/prod...ml?pcode=DBW17
Data has its place, but in this context it should be treated a
guide for a wise, rather than an
absolute given the potential for experimental bias, methodological weakness etc.