![]() ![]() Most striking of all, looking thin and frail hanging from the arms of the players, were the wood rackets: Dunlop Maxply Fort, Wilson Jack Kramer Autograph, Chris Evert Autograph. Looking around as I walked to the base line to serve, I felt as if I were back at the Kendalltown Tennis Club, in suburban Miami, twenty years earlier. The only thing missing was the once popular Wilson T2000-steel scepter of the brat king, Jimmy Connors. For this was the First Annual Woody Tournament of Cape Cod, the local exemplar of a recent nationwide phenomenon. No steel, aluminum, graphite, titanium, or composite need apply. If it didn't come from a tree, leave it at home. To some, the premise of the tournament may have been a novelty my firstround opponent had never before played with wood. To others, it meant merely the resurfacing of a quaint memory-"Can you believe we actually played with these things?" But to me-and to many others, I soon discovered-it was something much more. In the week before the tournament, as I practiced with my old Kramers (last used in 1982, my first year of college tennis), I was visited by a long-forgotten pleasure: the feel of wood. ![]() Sure, it was harder to find the sweet spot on the smaller head and even when I did, there was none of the space-age power of today's launch pads. It required a lot more skill to hit any particular shot. At the net I really had to volley, with the correct half-swing form I couldn't just stick out my shield and rely on its innate power. Fundamental technique, remembered deep in the muscles, became critical again. In the early 1970s, when racket manufacturers were experimenting with new metal designs, a bread-and-butter advertising campaign bragged of "the power of metal, with the feel of wood." Every kid learning the game quickly came to know that steel was for power and wood for control. ![]() The consensus, though, was that the strength you got with metal was not enough to make up for the loss of touch. Then, in 1976, Howard Head stepped in and changed tennis forever.Ĭonnors swore by his T2000 (customized with lead tape to weight the head), but for the most part wood held its ground. Having given the world the metal ski and the composite tennis racket, Head had retired from his namesake company and was wishing that he could get more power into his tennis game. The result was the first big-head racket, and a new company, Prince. At first the comical green giant of a racket that was the Prince prototype met with general resistance. Older women on the courts were suddenly volleying much better, but the main reaction to the Prince Classic was laughter. The company's next model, the sleek black Prince Pro, helped win over some male players, but for a few years the oversized racket remained an object of scorn. However, by 1981, although Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe were still winning championships with wood, most junior players had made the switch. The power of the big rackets was too much to forswear. Open with a conventional-sized racket, but the majority of players at the Open wielded big rackets, and for the first time more than half of all rackets sold were oversized. ![]()
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