What the hell is Arnaud Clement doing?!

[JW10S]

Originally Posted by jelle v

Did he really get dumped by Head this time or what?

I don't know specifically about Clement but I do know some former HEAD players (Monfils, Karlovic) did not have their contracts renewed when HEAD signed Djokovic. One could speculate Clement is in the same boat. The money had to come from somewhere...

[saram]

Originally Posted by orangettecoleman

Well, if something happened in transit to his racquets and he had to borrow Dima's (like Stepanek did in Beijing with Djokovic), he would just have had to make do and adjust to the standard length. I don't think it's that unreasonable that he just borrowed Dima's racquets and did his best to adjust tot he different length, considering the alternative would have been to default the tournament i guess. and i'm sure he could have the stringer put the head logo on his strings to make his sponsors happy, and make the best of a bad situation.

Good point, but this is over the span of two different tournaments. And, no logo in Dubai as opposed to the previous tournament.

[ihearit1st]

I just saw Clement drop off a racquet at the stringers at the BMW challenger and its a KBlade 98 with Babolat Natural Gut. He dropped off 3 of them and said no stencil.

[roundiesee]

What possible reason could Arnaud have for switching to the KBlade98, after having used the Head PT 280 for so long? And switching to full gut? I thought that trend had disappeared amongst the pros. Even Pete uses a hybrid now I think.

[orangettecoleman]

Originally Posted by roundiesee

What possible reason could Arnaud have for switching to the KBlade98, after having used the Head PT 280 for so long? And switching to full gut? I thought that trend had disappeared amongst the pros. Even Pete uses a hybrid now I think.

I don't know if you could call using natural gut a "trend" since that's what everyone has been using ever since the game was invented. anyway, Clement has always used full natural gut.

[roundiesee]

Originally Posted by orangettecoleman

I don't know if you could call using natural gut a "trend" since that's what everyone has been using ever since the game was invented. anyway, Clement has always used full natural gut.

Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of that!

[OliverSimon]

wierd...i have no idea what hes doing!!

[OliverSimon]

at first i thought it was some new cool head racquet!

[bluegrasser]

Originally Posted by roundiesee

What possible reason could Arnaud have for switching to the KBlade98, after having used the Head PT 280 for so long? And switching to full gut? I thought that trend had disappeared amongst the pros. Even Pete uses a hybrid now I think.

I think when players get near the end of their career they sometimes look to change sticks...maybe to give them a little more pop etc. Arnaud also was using a PD like Chang did toward the end.

[tomas9848]

yeah i saw that in a picture of him at a challenger match.

[featherlight]

did he get dropped by head

[THESEXPISTOL]

Someone realised what happened meanwhile?
I saw him using a Kblade98 paint and wilson stencil in Lyon. But that headsize looks more like 100''.

[Puddy]

Originally Posted by loner1984

Go to g e t t y i m a g e s and check it out. He's playing with what looks like a K-Blade 98 with a Head stencil on the strings. At first I thought it was a new racquet from Head until further examination. Weird!

http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Se...t&src=standard

Hmm. Maybe I'm not seeing things correctly as every photo of him with a racquet is a Wilson KBlade with a Wilson "W" stencil. Maybe they changed the older photos around?

[vsbabolat]

Try this one.....
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/84...y-Images-Sport

[GS]

I'm still amazed that Clement, years ago, still recovering from shoulder surgery, entered a challenger tournament in southern France, and played LEFT-handed!
He actually won his first round.

[THESEXPISTOL]

Originally Posted by GS

I'm still amazed that Clement, years ago, still recovering from shoulder surgery, entered a challenger tournament in southern France, and played LEFT-handed!
He actually won his first round.

are you serious?

[jazzyfunkybluesy]

Originally Posted by vsbabolat

No, Tursunov uses the 98 with the cosmetics of the 93. But I see your point about the different cosmetics on Clement's racquet and Tursunov's. This is very strange indeed what Clement is doing.... Maybe HEAD has cut off Clement's supply of PT57A's??

How are you certain of this and other pros raquets?

[GS]

Yeah, I'm serious---it happened.
3 of my friends had serious wrist injuries in the past, so they started playing left-handed. I was amazed at what they could do---no hard-hitting, just consistent groundstrokes.
Glad I'm a lefty already....

[mikeler]

After a year of triceps tendonitis, I'm considering ditching right handed tennis and going lefty.