Question on Wilson Prostaff ROK 102'

[blue sea]

I have used the Prostaff ROK 102' for several months, and it plays pretty nice. However, recently I noticed that it had a red bumper guard, and had Double Braided icon on the inner shaft which means it has kevlar in it. After searching the web (Wilson North America website - retired models) I found that the ROK 93 (which I assume to have the same materials as the ROK 102's) stated that this racquet was uni-braided, only HC and Graphite (Tennis-warehouse specs the same thing), also I could not find any ROK image with a red bumper guard.

Thus, the question is whether the ROK 102' I bought was genuine or not. Specifically, Double Braided and kevlar are often found in Prostaff 6.0, 6.1 and HPS 6.1 racquets.

Thanks for your feebacks.

 

[Bora]

Red bumper guards with Wilson's usually means demo or prototype. Perhaps you have one of those. I think the ROK 102 is double braided, which doesn't always mean it has Kevlar in it.

 

[blue sea]

Thanks Bora.
As far as I know Double Braided means there is two braids, one hypercarbon -graphite, and one graphite-kevlar, so that DB means there is kevlar in the racquet. Any other explanation?

 

[Coda]

bora is correct, red bumpers=demo. I'm pretty sure that unless it has a kevlar icon on it, it doesn't have kevlar in it regardless if it's double braided or not.

 

[kinsella]

The ROK 93 did have kevlar in it, despite not advertising it. This was covered by TW about 18 months ago, so the source is pretty good. Why they did not update the product description is a mystery.

Kevlar has great tensile strength (capacity to pull) and shear resistance (hard to cut), but is does not have as high a modulus (resistance to bending or stiffness) as graphite. As a result, it adds durability and some vibration dampening to a frame. The frames I have hit with Kevlar (or Twaron) are very comfortable.

Kevlar is one of the reasons the ROK had such a nice feel.

 

[Bora]

Kevlar is a great material, no doubt about it. Wilson racquets with Kevlar has a very distinct feel to them. While the ROK 102 might have some Kevlar in it, the double braid doesn't always mean it involves Kevlar. You see the braid refers to the way the a material is laid a certain way and direction, so its possible to do a double braid with 2 layers of high modulus graphite or even one layer of normal graphite and one layer or HM graphite.