Cilic annoyed stringing took ~30 minutes from on court pickup to drop off

eelhc

Hall of Fame
AO finals, Cilic sent out a couple of frames to be re-strung. Looks like they did not go off-site to P1. Still, ~30 min on court pickup to drop off seems pretty darned fast.

Of course, he was probably more annoyed he was down a break on the 3rd set when the racquets came back.

Perhaps they were anticipating that the roof would be open when the racquets were initially strung,

Just tells you... Stringing and Tournament stringing are about as different as woodworking and welding.
 

Irvin

Talk Tennis Guru
@eelhc you’re either watching too much TV or not enough. It took 35 minutes for the two rackets and the X-spert common taters assumed he was upset it took so long. Then they assumed the problem was the rackets canes it a Yonex bag. Last but not least after send two more back to be restrung they assumed the tension was too high. They said (who knows if they’re assuming again) they were first strung at 27 Kg and it should have been 25.

Who knows what all was going on?

EDIT: I think the X-spert common taters get paid by the number of comments they they think or dream up.

EDIT: I also heard no women retired in the AO but 4 men did including Nadal and Chung. Women must be tougher
 

rchjr2091

Semi-Pro
What I found surprising was that Cilic goes into a grand slam final and wasn’t prepared for every scenario. I’m just arm chair quarterbacking but I would have had more racquets with different tensions. If not in my bag in the locker room so I could have minimal time using a racquet/tension I was comfortable with . Obviously I have no experience in their world so maybe there was a reason he did it the way he did.
 

Dags

Hall of Fame
AO finals, Cilic sent out a couple of frames to be re-strung. Looks like they did not go off-site to P1.
Cilic isn't a P1 client:

https://twitter.com/priority1/status/957639490327203840

What I found surprising was that Cilic goes into a grand slam final and wasn’t prepared for every scenario. I’m just arm chair quarterbacking but I would have had more racquets with different tensions. If not in my bag in the locker room so I could have minimal time using a racquet/tension I was comfortable with . Obviously I have no experience in their world so maybe there was a reason he did it the way he did.
I've always been under the impression that pros travel with around a dozen racquets. Given the number of racquets they use in a five set match, there's not much wiggle room for having multiple permutations.
 

eelhc

Hall of Fame
@eelhc you’re either watching too much TV or not enough. It took 35 minutes for the two rackets and the X-spert common taters assumed he was upset it took so long. Then they assumed the problem was the rackets canes it a Yonex bag. Last but not least after send two more back to be restrung they assumed the tension was too high. They said (who knows if they’re assuming again) they were first strung at 27 Kg and it should have been 25.

Who knows what all was going on?

EDIT: I think the X-spert common taters get paid by the number of comments they they think or dream up.

EDIT: I also heard no women retired in the AO but 4 men did including Nadal and Chung. Women must be tougher

At the time I posted, the commentators were mentioning 30 min. But I suspect it had more to do with the fact he wasn't finding his rhythm vs the tension or deficiencies in stringing. I actually think that whole fiasco distracted him from concentrating on the match. He looked fine in the 4th set.
 

ebsbert

New User
From the interviews Cilic was definitely assuming the roof would be open and the temperatures to be hot. He said it was much cooler than he anticipated.
 

Big_Dangerous

Talk Tennis Guru
From the interviews Cilic was definitely assuming the roof would be open and the temperatures to be hot. He said it was much cooler than he anticipated.

Even so though, that doesn't seem to make much sense. Cilic was wildly missing shots by a lot in the first set. I mean we're talking like 4-8 feet long... At that point, you can't really blame the equipment and tension...

What I found surprising was that Cilic goes into a grand slam final and wasn’t prepared for every scenario. I’m just arm chair quarterbacking but I would have had more racquets with different tensions. If not in my bag in the locker room so I could have minimal time using a racquet/tension I was comfortable with . Obviously I have no experience in their world so maybe there was a reason he did it the way he did.

You know what they say: Prior planning prevents poor performance. :)
 

esgee48

G.O.A.T.
35 minutes = 2100 seconds. 2 Prestiges is (18+20)*2 = 76 strings to tension. That's a little under 27 seconds per string. The tension quality was probably really bad since it appears to be pull and clamp as fast as you can. If you take away some minutes for racquet prep, then the time for string is even lower; meaning even faster tensioning or worse QC. 3 cents. FWIW, I can do a frame in 15 minutes (14x18 Prince), but the overall string tension variance is horrible. This does not include racquet prep.
 

rchjr2091

Semi-Pro
Even so though, that doesn't seem to make much sense. Cilic was wildly missing shots by a lot in the first set. I mean we're talking like 4-8 feet long... At that point, you can't really blame the equipment and tension...



You know what they say: Prior planning prevents poor performance. :)

Exactly!
 

Nostradamus

Bionic Poster
AO finals, Cilic sent out a couple of frames to be re-strung. Looks like they did not go off-site to P1. Still, ~30 min on court pickup to drop off seems pretty darned fast.

Of course, he was probably more annoyed he was down a break on the 3rd set when the racquets came back.

Perhaps they were anticipating that the roof would be open when the racquets were initially strung,

Just tells you... Stringing and Tournament stringing are about as different as woodworking and welding.
Why was P1 off site ?? I thought P1 was always there on site for any emergency stringing like this ?
 

eelhc

Hall of Fame
Why was P1 off site ?? I thought P1 was always there on site for any emergency stringing like this ?
P1 is a private company and has nothing to do with the tennis governing bodies. If they chose to sponcer the tournament with a gazillion dollars maybe they would be then official stringing team.

Sent from my LGUS997 using Tapatalk
 

Wes

Hall of Fame
I've always been under the impression that pros travel with around a dozen racquets. Given the number of racquets they use in a five set match, there's not much wiggle room for having multiple permutations.
That's pretty much true.

35 minutes = 2100 seconds. 2 Prestiges is (18+20)*2 = 76 strings to tension. That's a little under 27 seconds per string.
Cilic doesn't use 18x20 Prestiges.
His are 16x19.
Just mentioning... not trying to invalidate your point.

Why was P1 off site ?? I thought P1 was always there on site for any emergency stringing like this ?
P1 is always off site (hotel room)... unless they are the designated stringers for the tournament (i.e. Cincinnati).
 

Rabbit

G.O.A.T.
I think it's much ado about nothing. Cilic was fine when he was leveling the match. I've seen him get irritated when he's losing and blaming his box or his <insert culprit here>. The stringing at the AO was probably tip top and his frames were probably exactly what he ordered. If anything, it was what Fed was feeding him that had him off center.
 

Irvin

Talk Tennis Guru
I thought I read some he was expecting it to be hotter and when they closed the roof it cooled down and his tension was too high. He sent them out to be strung lower 25 Kg and it was done at 27 same as what he sent in to be strung.
 

eelhc

Hall of Fame
Cilic isn't a P1 client:

https://twitter.com/priority1/status/957639490327203840


I've always been under the impression that pros travel with around a dozen racquets. Given the number of racquets they use in a five set match, there's not much wiggle room for having multiple permutations.
Maybe after this experience he should be a P1 client.

I'm under the understanding that the top pros don't travel with their racquets at all. P1 gets the racquets from the manufacturer directly for their top clients and sets them up per the pros preference and also handles the logistics of transport between tournaments. Federer simply walks into the locker room, practice court, etc and his equipment is there ready for him. I've read that P1 charges $60K+ for their top level consierge service.

Sent from my LGUS997 using Tapatalk
 

1HBHfanatic

Legend
I thought I read some he was expecting it to be hotter and when they closed the roof it cooled down and his tension was too high. He sent them out to be strung lower 25 Kg and it was done at 27 same as what he sent in to be strung.

While reading all the posts, and spevially yours, i was thinking how tight the racquet must feel coming of the stringer
def. Much tighter than a racquet prestrung the night before
would the ao stringers or who ever strung the racquet during the match be able to compensate for the time tension difference? Or even try!?, since the pro asked for a specific tension
 

Dags

Hall of Fame
This:
The stringing at the AO was probably tip top and his frames were probably exactly what he ordered.
and this:
I thought I read some he was expecting it to be hotter and when they closed the roof it cooled down and his tension was too high.
seem by far the most likely explanation. I doubt very much that the players practiced under what turned out to be the match conditions, so it's not a leap to suspect that he simply requested a tension and subsequently decided it wasn't to his liking. It's not the first time we've seen players send racquets for restringing in a major match - I'm pretty sure I've watched both Rafa and Andy do it. Mostly we'll only notice if the television cameras and commentators draw our attention to it. The 'TV Changeover' means for the most part we're subject to commercial breaks at the change of ends when this sort of thing happens.
 

WYK

Hall of Fame
AO finals, Cilic sent out a couple of frames to be re-strung. Looks like they did not go off-site to P1. Still, ~30 min on court pickup to drop off seems pretty darned fast.

Of course, he was probably more annoyed he was down a break on the 3rd set when the racquets came back.

Perhaps they were anticipating that the roof would be open when the racquets were initially strung,

Just tells you... Stringing and Tournament stringing are about as different as woodworking and welding.

If he used the AO stringing service, they make it clear they aim for 17 minutes for courtside service(from the stringer's doors back to the court), and have so for years. So if it did take 30mins, that would have definitely been noticed by Cilic. Having them come back 4.4lbs tighter than requested would make almost anyone upset. Many of the pros also tend to stick with one stringer during the open, if not for every time they attend the open. The opens themselves will send the racquets to the same stringer during the open as well if the pro does not state who they want to use. So who knows what actually happened. Maybe his usual guy was not there the last day. Maybe someone got their lines crossed. Maybe Cilic asked for the wrong tension himself. Maybe ESPN is full of it. Maybe it was the Noid.
 

PBODY99

Legend
Two frames by the same tech ~30 minutes not bad.
A helper cuts out stencils and bags as shown in many behind the scenes video.
Changing the tension 2 KG lower, if it did not happen, blame his box for not following the runner to make sure.
Once he knew they were closing the roof,which was before the start of the match if I remember correctly, he must have played a match in cooler weather as the temps did vary over the course of the 2 weeks.
Seems that the chair could have sent the information to the stringing team using on site tech.
 
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