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Rookie
Have a good read--a..lee
By JOHN BRANCH
Published: July 1, 2007
WIMBLEDON, England, June 30 — Roger Federer shook hands with Marat Safin after their match Friday night. But their rackets spent the night together in a Wimbledon Village apartment.
Nate Ferguson and Ron Yu rebuild rackets daily for clients like Roger Federer, who requests rackets, above, with three different tensions.
The rackets have been shacking up there for more than a week, as is their habit, and they were not alone on Clifton Road. On the floor is a beer box, with the names of nine of the best tennis players in the world scribbled in black ink on the side. The box has been emptied of whatever bottles it once held and filled with plastic packages of wiry string used for tennis rackets. Nearby is a spool of gut, made of cow intestines.
On two tables are heavy, computerized machines with a steel turntable on one end. Leaning against the wall are some of the most expensive custom tennis rackets made.
And on the couch are two men wielding wire cutters, destroying the handiwork they spent hours constructing earlier in the day and the night before. They cut the tightly wound string from dozens of rackets — these 10 for Federer, those 10 for Tim Henman — some of which never made it out of the bag that day. The tangled remains of string lay at their feet.
Nate Ferguson and Ron Yu construct, deconstruct and reconstruct the woven crisscross pattern of racket strings every day, for dozens of rackets. Like bread, strung rackets are not best when they are a day old. The $4,000 machines that each man lugs to every tournament precisely calibrates the tensions of each racket string, but once the strings are in, the whole thing slowly goes stale. Players usually want a fresh batch.
“Once you put the strings in the racket, it’ll never be tighter than that,” Ferguson said.
This is why Henman needed 35 string jobs, at about 20 minutes each, for his two matches. He had 10 rackets, with two different tensions, for his first-round match against Carlos Moyá. The match was suspended in the fifth set, so he wanted five more for the next day. He won, and needed 10 rackets for his match against Feliciano López. That was postponed a day because of more rain, so the 10 rackets were unstrung and restrung.
“It’s a little painful for me, but. ... ,” Yu said as he pulled rackets from the bags he placed them in the night before and began ripping the strings out of them.
Ferguson, 44, began customizing rackets for Pete Sampras in 1990. He became his personal stringer in 1998, traveling to tournaments to make sure the rackets were perfect.
Yu, 39, traveled with Andre Agassi. Ferguson and Yu joined together in 2001 and, as a little company called Priority One, they customize rackets for many players and string for nine of them: Federer, Safin, Henman, Novak Djokovic, Fernando González, Andy Murray, Marcos Baghdatis, Lleyton Hewitt and Mardy Fish.
Only a handful of players — almost all of them men, skewed toward the top of the world rankings — have traveling stringers. Most who do not use Priority One use **** Tennis, based in New York. Other touring professionals use the in-house stringing services offered at each tournament, including Wimbledon.
The players have yearlong contracts. They pay a flat fee, and all their stringing needs, wherever in the world they need rackets strung, are met.
“One guy plays in a tournament, one of us is there,” Ferguson said.
Friends say Ferguson and Yu have the best jobs. They travel the world, hang out with tennis stars and get daily personal text messages from Federer, who hands over his rackets during the day and sends his tension requests late at night, which is why his rackets are always strung in the morning.
But they spend about 35 weeks of the year on the road, rather than at home near Tampa, Fla. — where Yu, single, “does my laundry,” he said, and Ferguson has a wife and two children. Their hours are basically opposite those of the players: up before dawn to string, delivering the rackets to the players at their apartments or at the All England Club, then downtime in the middle of the day during the matches.
The process then reverses: collect all the rackets, cut out all the strings and stay up until the wee hours stringing them again.
The head of the racket fits onto a swiveling turntable, and Ferguson and Yu perform macramé — main strings first, then the cross strings, woven through by hand, then pulled taut by the machine and tied off.
People ask, straight-faced, how they string rackets so perfectly that the logo comes out looking just right. They sometimes play along, explaining that it is the most difficult part of their job.
But in the hall near the door is an ink-stained brown box with a number of stencils on it. Each is a logo from a famous racket manufacturer. After the rackets are strung, the appropriate stencil is placed on top and ink creates the logo.
Most string jobs are a hybrid, cross-hatched with the synthetic Luxilon and gut. Some players like them looser, some tighter. Preferences change with each match and can depend on everything from the weather to the opponent.
Henman’s racket has 16 main strings and 18 cross strings. Safin’s has a denser string-bed pattern, with 18 main strings and 20 cross strings on a smaller racket head. Federer, who carries anywhere from 9 to 12 rackets to every match, likes his with 10 tiny string holders, little clips that keep the strings from sawing each other where they cross.
Federer usually requests three different tensions: high, medium and low. Each racket has three little stickers telling him which it is. He changes rackets every time the balls are replaced by a fresh batch — after the first seven games, then every nine games after that. There is an exception: Federer does not want to serve with fresh strings and fresh balls. If the ball swap is going to occur on his turn to serve, he changes rackets the game before.
“I don’t know how he keeps track of that, but he does,” Yu said.
When eight clients are in a tournament — as they were at the start of Wimbledon, with Murray out with a wrist injury — and with rain delays creating scheduling chaos, there is a dizzying number of appointments to grab rackets and return them.
The workload slows as the tournament dismisses the losers. But that is not what the stringers want.
“I love Sunday stringing,” said Yu, referring to the day that championship matches are usually played. While the novelty of the job disappeared long ago, there is pride knowing that the racket of a champion was left in their hands.
Enjoy,
A..Lee
By JOHN BRANCH
Published: July 1, 2007
WIMBLEDON, England, June 30 — Roger Federer shook hands with Marat Safin after their match Friday night. But their rackets spent the night together in a Wimbledon Village apartment.
Nate Ferguson and Ron Yu rebuild rackets daily for clients like Roger Federer, who requests rackets, above, with three different tensions.
The rackets have been shacking up there for more than a week, as is their habit, and they were not alone on Clifton Road. On the floor is a beer box, with the names of nine of the best tennis players in the world scribbled in black ink on the side. The box has been emptied of whatever bottles it once held and filled with plastic packages of wiry string used for tennis rackets. Nearby is a spool of gut, made of cow intestines.
On two tables are heavy, computerized machines with a steel turntable on one end. Leaning against the wall are some of the most expensive custom tennis rackets made.
And on the couch are two men wielding wire cutters, destroying the handiwork they spent hours constructing earlier in the day and the night before. They cut the tightly wound string from dozens of rackets — these 10 for Federer, those 10 for Tim Henman — some of which never made it out of the bag that day. The tangled remains of string lay at their feet.
Nate Ferguson and Ron Yu construct, deconstruct and reconstruct the woven crisscross pattern of racket strings every day, for dozens of rackets. Like bread, strung rackets are not best when they are a day old. The $4,000 machines that each man lugs to every tournament precisely calibrates the tensions of each racket string, but once the strings are in, the whole thing slowly goes stale. Players usually want a fresh batch.
“Once you put the strings in the racket, it’ll never be tighter than that,” Ferguson said.
This is why Henman needed 35 string jobs, at about 20 minutes each, for his two matches. He had 10 rackets, with two different tensions, for his first-round match against Carlos Moyá. The match was suspended in the fifth set, so he wanted five more for the next day. He won, and needed 10 rackets for his match against Feliciano López. That was postponed a day because of more rain, so the 10 rackets were unstrung and restrung.
“It’s a little painful for me, but. ... ,” Yu said as he pulled rackets from the bags he placed them in the night before and began ripping the strings out of them.
Ferguson, 44, began customizing rackets for Pete Sampras in 1990. He became his personal stringer in 1998, traveling to tournaments to make sure the rackets were perfect.
Yu, 39, traveled with Andre Agassi. Ferguson and Yu joined together in 2001 and, as a little company called Priority One, they customize rackets for many players and string for nine of them: Federer, Safin, Henman, Novak Djokovic, Fernando González, Andy Murray, Marcos Baghdatis, Lleyton Hewitt and Mardy Fish.
Only a handful of players — almost all of them men, skewed toward the top of the world rankings — have traveling stringers. Most who do not use Priority One use **** Tennis, based in New York. Other touring professionals use the in-house stringing services offered at each tournament, including Wimbledon.
The players have yearlong contracts. They pay a flat fee, and all their stringing needs, wherever in the world they need rackets strung, are met.
“One guy plays in a tournament, one of us is there,” Ferguson said.
Friends say Ferguson and Yu have the best jobs. They travel the world, hang out with tennis stars and get daily personal text messages from Federer, who hands over his rackets during the day and sends his tension requests late at night, which is why his rackets are always strung in the morning.
But they spend about 35 weeks of the year on the road, rather than at home near Tampa, Fla. — where Yu, single, “does my laundry,” he said, and Ferguson has a wife and two children. Their hours are basically opposite those of the players: up before dawn to string, delivering the rackets to the players at their apartments or at the All England Club, then downtime in the middle of the day during the matches.
The process then reverses: collect all the rackets, cut out all the strings and stay up until the wee hours stringing them again.
The head of the racket fits onto a swiveling turntable, and Ferguson and Yu perform macramé — main strings first, then the cross strings, woven through by hand, then pulled taut by the machine and tied off.
People ask, straight-faced, how they string rackets so perfectly that the logo comes out looking just right. They sometimes play along, explaining that it is the most difficult part of their job.
But in the hall near the door is an ink-stained brown box with a number of stencils on it. Each is a logo from a famous racket manufacturer. After the rackets are strung, the appropriate stencil is placed on top and ink creates the logo.
Most string jobs are a hybrid, cross-hatched with the synthetic Luxilon and gut. Some players like them looser, some tighter. Preferences change with each match and can depend on everything from the weather to the opponent.
Henman’s racket has 16 main strings and 18 cross strings. Safin’s has a denser string-bed pattern, with 18 main strings and 20 cross strings on a smaller racket head. Federer, who carries anywhere from 9 to 12 rackets to every match, likes his with 10 tiny string holders, little clips that keep the strings from sawing each other where they cross.
Federer usually requests three different tensions: high, medium and low. Each racket has three little stickers telling him which it is. He changes rackets every time the balls are replaced by a fresh batch — after the first seven games, then every nine games after that. There is an exception: Federer does not want to serve with fresh strings and fresh balls. If the ball swap is going to occur on his turn to serve, he changes rackets the game before.
“I don’t know how he keeps track of that, but he does,” Yu said.
When eight clients are in a tournament — as they were at the start of Wimbledon, with Murray out with a wrist injury — and with rain delays creating scheduling chaos, there is a dizzying number of appointments to grab rackets and return them.
The workload slows as the tournament dismisses the losers. But that is not what the stringers want.
“I love Sunday stringing,” said Yu, referring to the day that championship matches are usually played. While the novelty of the job disappeared long ago, there is pride knowing that the racket of a champion was left in their hands.
Enjoy,
A..Lee
