Which companies exit from tennis hurts you the most?

kevin qmto

kevin qmto

Hall of Fame
There's no shortage of out of business racket manufacturers out there, and this is a simple question, which ones absence is most felt by you personally? Would you resurrect them if you could, and if they made a modern lineup, how would their past offerings fare with some infusions of modern tech?

Me, I'm sad Adidas is gone. I've been a fan of their soft goods, and once I started going down the rabbit hole of their racket lineups, both old and new(er), I found I really dug their stuff. I wish they would have put a bit more effort into their last attempt to get back in the industry. Below are the ones I've tried.

Cosmos (1980ish?)
pO7cnA0.jpg


GTX-Mid T (1985)
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Pro Court 3 (1990)
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Barricade (2009)
dZdC1cm.jpg


Barricade iES (2010 prototype, never mass produced)
Ip11wbJ.jpg




Close runner up brands for me are Yamaha and Fox/Bosworth.
 
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WYK

WYK

Hall of Fame
Grafil Injection said:
Wimbledon, Fischer, non-big-box Slazenger
Click to expand...

Fun fact, the Slazengers still own the estate I live near here(Powerscourt, Enniskerry). I occasionally meet them on my walks, and have done some work with Alex.
Here in Europe they still put their name on sports clothing, shoes, and various other things.
As for me, I miss Prince. Yeah, I know they are still around, but you definitely get the feeling they are on life support :(
 
R

retrowagen

Hall of Fame
Not sure what to say; all of the Europe-based brands listed above faced a paradigm shift around 1992 or 1993, when, due to international currency trade rates and other factors, virtually all of them abandoned their own local production of tennis goods and farmed it all off to Asian OEMs, all of whom used materials of lesser quality due to the burgeoning military/aerospace market requiring all of the best carbon prepreg materials at roughly the same time. Also, at the same time, the tennis boom of the 1980's was turning bust in the United States and elsewhere. And as a result of these huge factors, the tennis racquet and shoe industry became mostly a marketing exercise of conjuring up phony new "tech" to entice consumers to purchase inferior gear made as cheaply as possible, every season. The Adidas Barricade frames are an example - OEM "catalog" frames that Adidas purchased from a Chinese manufacturer who entered a deal to license the Adidas name on an otherwise very mediocre composite frame.

I personally miss pre-1993 Fischer the most. Their lineup in 1991 was probably the finest tennis equipment ever made, in my humble opinion. Best quality, easiest tools to play advanced tennis with, yet friendly enough for beginners. Beautifully made by industrial artisans in Austria, designed by engineers who were working closely with great players and actually listening to them. Head's Austrian operation in the late 1980's was much the same story. And then there was funky Dunlop with their English-made injection molded frames--magic on court, but a businessman's unit cost nightmare. In Belgium in the 1980's, Snauwaert produced an amazing variety of interesting composite frames, bravely trying new composite blends, but always with a little bit of wood inside, ostensibly as a vibration tuning element, but probably as a stalwart nod to their expertise with the material for the decades prior.

Unfortunately, we tend to look at these old racquets as totems of sporting triumphs, but they were made by businesses that were struggling to survive. We can view them now as canaries in mines; case studies on the dumbing down of consumers, or the compromising away of substance for style as first-world consumers continue to have an insatiable appetite for disposable luxury goods made by people working in very difficult conditions for very little pay, out of sight and mind on the other side of the globe. It's not how the business always was, but it is how it has been for the last twenty-odd years, and will be for the foreseeable future.
 
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D

d-quik

Hall of Fame
Honestly I love the content in this thread (pressed like on all the replies) but reading it just makes me sad at the same time :(
 
Grafil Injection

Grafil Injection

Hall of Fame
WYK said:
Fun fact, the Slazengers still own the estate I live near here(Powerscourt, Enniskerry). I occasionally meet them on my walks, and have done some work with Alex.
Here in Europe they still put their name on sports clothing, shoes, and various other things.
As for me, I miss Prince. Yeah, I know they are still around, but you definitely get the feeling they are on life support :(
Click to expand...
Trying to think of the last decent Slazenger, I came up with the Type II NX One. Nowadays, the brand is owned by Sports Direct so it's mostly aluminium tat.
 
NicoMK

NicoMK

Hall of Fame
retrowagen said:
I personally miss pre-1993 Fischer the most. Their lineup in 1991 was probably the finest tennis equipment ever made, in my humble opinion. Best quality, easiest tools to play advanced tennis with, yet friendly enough for beginners. Beautifully made by industrial artisans in Austria, designed by engineers who were working closely with great players and actually listening to them. Head's Austrian operation in the late 1980's was much the same story.
Click to expand...

Absolutely well said.
 
R

retrowagen

Hall of Fame
Henry Hub said:
Another vote for Slazenger. I live in hope of Sumitomo finding some spare pennies behind the couch and buying and transforming Slazenger like they have done Dunlop.
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Wishful and whimsical thinking for certain, but after passing a massive dark cloud over this thread, for which I am sorry (requiescat-in-pace), I do join you in the hope that Slazenger, whose V-24 I lusted after as a 13-year-old, will someday regain its rightful position in the pantheon of tennis equipment manufacturers.
 
esgee48

esgee48

G.O.A.T.
Does anyone know if the ‘patents’ that forced Yamaha out of the business expired? Seems to me that they should be getting close to expiration.
 
kevin qmto

kevin qmto

Hall of Fame
coachrick said:
Throw Davis in the ring as well; although neither brand was particularly forward-thinking.
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Davis must have done something right, as at the recent Woodie Classic in STL, about half the participants in the 'advanced' draw were using Davis rackets, and none of them broke! Points for durability over time I suppose.

Embarrassingly, I forgot about my Adidas Cosmos racket, so I added it to the first post. I ended up using it for a few games in that same wood racket tournament after my Pro Kennex Blue ace's strings broke.
 
kevin qmto

kevin qmto

Hall of Fame
glad there’s so many other Yamaha fans here. Part of me wishes they’d had the guts to fight Wilson in the courts, instead of just throwing up their hands and quitting without a fight. Unless something about their frames truly ripped off a Wilson frame, which I think is pretty unlikely.
 
B

BumElbow

Professional
esgee48 said:
Does anyone know if the ‘patents’ that forced Yamaha out of the business expired? Seems to me that they should be getting close to expiration.
Click to expand...

Patent rights only last 17 years. And, I believe, must still be in use in order to be valid. Yamaha tennis racquet patents expired years ago.
 
dak95_00

dak95_00

Hall of Fame
Brooks. I miss their super comfortable and durable tennis shoes. Sure there are others but I really liked my Brooks shoes back in the 1980s.
 
kevin qmto

kevin qmto

Hall of Fame
mad dog1 said:
That looks like a Prince mold.
Click to expand...
idk I thought it kinda looked like Head (if you look it up on the auction site, you can see the beam widens out at the top like Head's Double Power Wedge)
but maybe, just maybe it was a completely original K2 masterpiece that went unappreciated in its time (likely 1990-somthing)...

last bit was sarcasm.
 
mad dog1

mad dog1

G.O.A.T.
kevin qmto said:
idk I thought it kinda looked like Head (if you look it up on the auction site, you can see the beam widens out at the top like Head's Double Power Wedge)
but maybe, just maybe it was a completely original K2 masterpiece that went unappreciated in its time (likely 1990-somthing)...

last bit was sarcasm.
Click to expand...
It looks like the Prince cts synergy 26 right down to the 16/18 string pattern. I don’t know of any Head sticks with that pattern.
 
R

retrowagen

Hall of Fame
mad dog1 said:
It looks like the Prince cts synergy 26 right down to the 16/18 string pattern. I don’t know of any Head sticks with that pattern.
Click to expand...
If I am not mistaken, Prince and K2 had the same owner in the early 90’s, but why they would rebrand a Prince as a K2 makes very little sense to me.
 
StringGuruMRT

StringGuruMRT

Semi-Pro
Puma for sure. Really wish I hadn't gotten rid of or broken all my BB Supers and Winners.. I was one of the ones hoping Becker would release a limited edition Volkl version of the BB Super when he bought in...

mad dog1 said:
It looks like the Prince cts synergy 26 right down to the 16/18 string pattern. I don’t know of any Head sticks with that pattern.
Click to expand...
It looks too wide at the tip to be a 26... Maybe the 28 or 32?
 
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