What are your general thoughts on racquet development through the years? I'm curious to hear the take of someone who has played through different eras of racquets and strings.
When I was a kid, I started playing tennis right at the end of the wood racquet era (early 80s). My first racquets were wood and aluminum garage sale frames. I also had a couple cheap graphite and fiberglass racquets. All of this stuff was really flexible, not powerful, and had small head sizes, so you had to swing slower and be more precise to be consistant.
My first real racquets were the Wilson Pro Staff, which I chose because Stefan Edberg used them and because I couldn't get Mats Wilander's Rossignal frames at my local shop. The Pro Staff had great feel when you hit in the sweet spot, which is why a lot of pros used them, all the way from the mid-80s to Federer's first few years as a top player in the early 2000s. However, for my level at the time, I wish I had gone with the Prince Original Graphite Oversize, which was a lot more forgiving and powerful. I think I would have developed a better net game and serve earlier on with that racquet because of it's bigger sweet spot and open string pattern, plus it would have enhanced my regular game style. But I was young and stubborn, and couldn't afford to switch after I commited to the Pro Staff.
To note, late 80s is also when I started using kevlar strings. I was using cheap nylon and synthetic gut before that, but when I started getting good, I was breaking strings every other day, which my Mom couldn't afford to keep up financially. A neighbor suggested kevlar instead because it was super durable. What's crazy is I used to string my Pro Staffs with a full bed of 15g kevlar at 70 lbs! That reduced the sweet spot down to the size of a dime, but it lasted a long time and I had a ton of control as a moonballer. It's amazing my arm didn't fall off! It wasn't until I got to college that I discovered the idea of hybriding the kevlar with synthetic gut and lowering the tension a bit. The hybrid setup didn't last as long, but performed better and was easier on the arm.
The first widebody frames with thick beams that I can remember were the Wilson Profile and the Prince Thunderstick. I think those arrived in the late 80s. I only hit with them as demos back then, but those frames produced easy power that was unlike anything on the market, and created a whole bunch of imitators and changes. I recall that they were super expensive at the time - north of $200 when the average frame was about $150. Aside from the Pro Staff, I had a bunch of great frames in the 90s and early 2000s in different head sizes and beams from Wilson, Prince, Head, Dunlop, and Pro Kennex. I've been using Babolats for the past 10 years, first the Pure Drive Roddick and then Pure Strike Tour. None of the new models of either of these frames have felt better than what I already have, so I'm using frames that are from 2014.
Anyway, to answer your question, I think there have been a few leaps in racquet technology:
From wood to graphite, from small head sizes to mid-size and oversize, from thin flexible beams to stiff widebodies, and from heavier to lighter, but more balanced frames. However, by and large, all of this development occured between 1980 and 2000. I don't think a lot of what has happened with racquets since then is very revolutionary or game changing. That's why you often find out that some top players are using racquet molds and specs of classic frames from the 90s with paint jobs over them. Personally, I found out that the reason I think I liked the standard sized Babolat Pure Drive Roddick 10 years ago is because the specifications were almost identical to the Pro Kennix Asymetric 365 frame I used in college in the early 90s! They feel almost the same.
(I watched a recent video from Nic on the Intuitive Tennis channel on Youtube where he described using the Pro Kennex Asymetric in college as well, and now he's a Babolat Pure Drive guy. I'm telling you, the specs and feel are the same between that early 90s racquet and what is out today.)
Given this, in my opinion, the biggest leap in technology in the past 15 years in tennis (aside from fitness, nutrition, and sports medicine at the pro level) is with the strings. As I wrote previously, I was not a big believer in poly strings in the beginning, but I am sold now. Poly strings strung at the proper tension can give you a blend of feel, control, power, durability, and yes... spin that is unprecedented compared to anything you could get previous to the mid-2000s.