Sanglier
Professional
This sub-forum doesn't have enough frivolous and borderline off-topic threads, hence I feel compelled to contribute a new one.
There was a period when manufacturers routinely co-marketed products for different racquet sports, made using the same technology, sharing similar features, and often clad in comparable paint jobs. As my infatuation with the history of racquet development had a relatively late onset, I only became aware of many of those non-tennis offerings until recent years, usually as a result of encountering them in a thrift shop or on fleabay. Here are a few that I was intrigued enough to pick up, but I know there are many more out there (Wilson and Head products are probably the most frequently encountered examples, but there are some weird and rare ones as well). If anyone here has other interesting examples in their collection, please share!
The Leach frames below are the oldest pairing I have. Unlike the other units in this post, Leach racquetball racquets are as common as dirt, and it is possibly the only instance in which a racquetball manufacturer tried to scale up their product to meet tennis requirements. As many earlier threads had already made abundantly clear, this effort was an unmitigated disaster, and a mercifully brief one.
As many of you know, Prince acquired Ektelon in 1987, the latter has been the de facto racquetball division of Prince ever since. What is less well known is that Prince had considered selling racquetball racquets under their own brand prior to that point, probably at around the time they bought Grafalloy. Here is one such product from that period. I don't think I've ever seen these racquets marketed in the US.
Fox only made tennis racquets when their production was US-based, so the Taiwan-sourced "RB-110" in the middle is more of a descendant of the two US racquets than an actual sibling. Indeed, if the WB-210 and WB-215 pictured below had a white baby together, this is basically how it would look. As an aside, some of you might recognize this particular WB-210 as one of Brad Gilbert's personal frames (yellow terrycloth grip, Bosworth-applied lead strips). It was buried among hundreds of filthy racquets discovered by a construction worker while clearing a large house once inhabited by a hoarder. The worker told me he trashed hundreds of racquets with the rest of the disgusting junk, until more were unearthed from beneath the refuse, at which point he decided to gather up what's left in giant trash bags and put them on OfferUp in 'as found' condition. Someone had already dug through those trash bags and picked out all the good stuff by the time I got to the scene, but that early bird either was not a fan of Gilbert's or was too repulsed by the terrycloth grip to touch the WB-210. The grip was more sallow than yellow before I cleaned it. Given how close this frame came to death, I couldn't help but wonder if there were other gems that now lie buried in a landfill somewhere!
There was a period when manufacturers routinely co-marketed products for different racquet sports, made using the same technology, sharing similar features, and often clad in comparable paint jobs. As my infatuation with the history of racquet development had a relatively late onset, I only became aware of many of those non-tennis offerings until recent years, usually as a result of encountering them in a thrift shop or on fleabay. Here are a few that I was intrigued enough to pick up, but I know there are many more out there (Wilson and Head products are probably the most frequently encountered examples, but there are some weird and rare ones as well). If anyone here has other interesting examples in their collection, please share!
The Leach frames below are the oldest pairing I have. Unlike the other units in this post, Leach racquetball racquets are as common as dirt, and it is possibly the only instance in which a racquetball manufacturer tried to scale up their product to meet tennis requirements. As many earlier threads had already made abundantly clear, this effort was an unmitigated disaster, and a mercifully brief one.
As many of you know, Prince acquired Ektelon in 1987, the latter has been the de facto racquetball division of Prince ever since. What is less well known is that Prince had considered selling racquetball racquets under their own brand prior to that point, probably at around the time they bought Grafalloy. Here is one such product from that period. I don't think I've ever seen these racquets marketed in the US.
Fox only made tennis racquets when their production was US-based, so the Taiwan-sourced "RB-110" in the middle is more of a descendant of the two US racquets than an actual sibling. Indeed, if the WB-210 and WB-215 pictured below had a white baby together, this is basically how it would look. As an aside, some of you might recognize this particular WB-210 as one of Brad Gilbert's personal frames (yellow terrycloth grip, Bosworth-applied lead strips). It was buried among hundreds of filthy racquets discovered by a construction worker while clearing a large house once inhabited by a hoarder. The worker told me he trashed hundreds of racquets with the rest of the disgusting junk, until more were unearthed from beneath the refuse, at which point he decided to gather up what's left in giant trash bags and put them on OfferUp in 'as found' condition. Someone had already dug through those trash bags and picked out all the good stuff by the time I got to the scene, but that early bird either was not a fan of Gilbert's or was too repulsed by the terrycloth grip to touch the WB-210. The grip was more sallow than yellow before I cleaned it. Given how close this frame came to death, I couldn't help but wonder if there were other gems that now lie buried in a landfill somewhere!
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