Murray's 124 mph forehand.

[GeoffWilliams]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQXM_Hd7UJY&feature=player_detailpage#t=217s

Who says he can't stick it?

Hey, Murray. You need to switch to vs team mains/alu crosses, and up the total mass on your frame back up to 360g, and string it at 60/58lbs. (Right now he's alu/vs team crosses, 63/61, and 347g with a pt57A drill pattern: 16 x 19.) That shot would have been 141mph with that set up.

[johnyandell]

Interestingly that one was hit semi-open. If you look at his forehand in general he hits almost fully open and loses hip rotation!

[GeoffWilliams]

His feet are set up fully open, but his non dominant arm is pointing to the side fence, and a very fast slap back and full follow through. It's the future of our sport. Flat out deadly ground strokes, like Joker used to crush Nadal, even with no serve.

[don_budge]

Racquet comparison between Djokovic and Federer...

geoffwilliams...would you please do a comparison of Djokovic's and Federer's racquets (perhaps Nadal's as well) and discuss the relative advantages of one or the other.

[GeoffWilliams]

That is a very good request. I could do that in my sleep. I have pics as well, as I have owned Rafa's stick, while no one can own Joker's, unless he gives them away as he did with four of them at this years' wimby, and someone immediately sold his on Ebay for about $4,500. Honestly, though, as the buyer admitted to me that he offered the seller much more, and the seller did not then create a fake bid to jack the sale price up, showing surprising honor in the transaction! The difference is the feel, and the string, and the weight of each frame, as they are so different, yet so powerful in their own regard, as great wine or great food is so different, yet, it's all just ice falling from the sky when it snows. Every snow flake is so unique, but their frames are nearly identical from stick to stick. Fed changes his mass and tension a little for the surface, as do most top pros, but the difference only goes a little bit, like from 352g-357g, and from 48.5/45.7- 49.6/46lbs, depending on grass/clay/humidity, etc. They can tell as little as one gram, like Michael Russel did recently on a blind frame hit test, with fake frames and his own (5). He said, "It feels like a glove. Yeah, that's mine.", whenever he got to h is own frame, and the one that was 1 gram off: "It's very close." The one that was way light: "It feels like a feather.", when it was 25grams light. Borg could tell when his 410g Donnays were 4 grams heavy, due to moisture (London) absorption due to humid conditions, and they sent a frame expert (like me) to his hotel room, and he placed the frames on the radiator one by one to dry them out back down to 410grams each. Borg placed all 50 Donnays on the hotel room floor, and lined them up, and then played the bongo drums over them, to induce his own sonic vibrations into each frame, to instill belief.

[GeoffWilliams]

That is a very good request. That would make an excellent video or article. I could do that in my sleep. I have pics as well, as I have owned Rafa's sticks for many years, See the cortex on the top stick, and Nadal's frame, the apd original, does not have the cortex, as it is painted on, as you can see in this pic, on the bottom frame, with his signature on it. It's just a paint job of the stiffer original APD, 27", 334g, 66RA. nadal frame
and also the h22 which Joker played with for awhile, while no one can own Joker's, unless he gives them away as he did with four of them at this years' wimby, and someone immediately sold his on Ebay for about $4,500. Honestly, though, as the buyer admitted to me that he offered the seller much more, and the seller did not then create a fake bid to jack the sale price up, showing surprising honor in the transaction! The difference is the feel, and the string, and the weight of each frame, as they are so different, yet so powerful in their own regard, as great wine or great food is so different, yet, it's all just ice falling from the sky when it snows. Every snow flake is so unique, but their frames are nearly identical from stick to stick. Fed changes his mass and tension a little for the surface, as do most top pros, but the difference only goes a little bit, like from 352g-357g, and from 48.5/45.7- 49.6/46lbs, depending on grass/clay/humidity, etc. They can tell as little as one gram, like Michael Russel did recently on a blind frame hit test, with fake frames and his own (5). He said, "It feels like a glove", whenever he got to h is own frame, and the one that was 1 gram off: "It's very close." The one that was way light: "It feels like a feather.", when it was 25grams light. Borg could tell when his 410g Donnays were 4 grams heavy, due to moisture (London) absorption due to humid conditions, and they sent a frame expert (like me) to his hotel room, and he placed the frames on the radiator one by one to dry them out back down to 410grams each. Borg placed all 50 Donnays on the hotel room floor, and lined them up, and then played the bongo drums over them, to induce his own sonic vibrations into each frame, to instill belief.

fed lead tape As you can plainly see, the lead tape varies about 2" (each side) on Feds frames, as the grommets have not been installed on the frames yet. Why is that? To vary the total mass, balance the swing weights, on differing frames.
joker lead tape
These are the real frames Nadal uses, in every match. He gets about 60 per year. He places lead at 12 oclock under the grommets. He uses a very small grip for the size of his hand, in order to increase the torque/rotation of top spin shots. They spin the frames in between shots to relax more.

[GeoffWilliams]

jokers broken frame
joker lead tape
Feds' string a lings

[tennis_chiro]

The pictures are great, but...

geoffwilliams...would you please do a comparison of Djokovic's and Federer's racquets (perhaps Nadal's as well) and discuss the relative advantages of one or the other.

Geoff, all those pictures are great, but I, for one, would love to see a real comparison of the three frames in a some sort of simple tabular form that we might be able to see here on the forum "blackboard", going over sq. in., flexibiity, balance, stringing pattern, strings, frame thickness, shaft thickness, etc in a form that non-stringer dummies like me would have a chance to comprehend. Sure we could pull all that off of TennisWarehouse ourselves, but it would be great to see your perspective on how those individual characteristics come together to create different advantages or disadvantages and perhaps how those things play into the game styles and strokes of the three players. It seems your expertise would make you uniquely qualified to make those kind of extrapolations from the simple data that on its face, leaves dummies like me just a little bit baffled.

don

[GeoffWilliams]

Great reply. I will work on it for you. Some of the pics are mine, not all from TW.

[tennis_chiro]

Possible article

Great reply. I will work on it for you. Some of the pics are mine, not all from TW.

If you worked that up nicely, it might even be a good candidate for an article for JY!

don

[bman]

The New York Times did exactly what you were looking for in their Wimbledon preview.

[tennis_chiro]

The NY Times article

The New York Times did exactly what you were looking for in their Wimbledon preview.

Here's the link to the NYTimes article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/sports/tennis/20iht-SRWIRACKET20.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Federer,%20Nadal,%20Djokovic%20rackets&st=cse

I still think Geoff could make a good analysis to further expound on what they are saying here.

don

[GeoffWilliams]

They left out the fact that Fed has a stick more like an 18 x 20, esp. with the smaller head size. They left out swing wt., mass, descriptions of feel for each stick, and Djokovic has a 98sq. in. frame not the stock 100, and is nothing close to stock at all, not even the lay up. They left out that Fed uses vs team disguised as Wilson premium gut. They did not compare inertial differences, or talk about stiffness ratings and how it relates to the style played by each. They were close on tension, with Nadal at 54lbs/52, Fed at 48.5/45.6, Joker at 60/58 or 61/59, and why Fed and Joker drop the crosses down.

Nadal's frame feels stiff, with no cortex. It also feels light at 334g, but he has it 7-10pts. head heavy, which makes serving feel weird, and groundies set up for heavy spin and a good swing wt at 355g and 8g lead at 12.

Fed's frame feels like a strange stone feeling, muted stone, and a small frame, 16 x 19 at 90 sq. in., make it responsive if you hit the sweet spot, but not so good if you don't. The vs team gut/alu is a high power, high spin combo, with both at the top of their gut/poly end scales for both power and spin.

Top power rated, top spin rated for both gut and poly strings, both top out, and as a hybrid, used by Fed, Murray, Joker, there is a reason for that. Most bang for the buck. Gut as main accentuates the controlled power if strung with vs team top graded, and the alu mutes the gut's power, while adding a teflon sliding feeling. Murray uses it alu/vs team, which makes a lot less spin, and less power. More of a clay courter grinder set up, with the gut not as dominant, but still a taste of its power there. REally depends on hitting the sweet spot with that combo, while the other way around the power is there even in off center shots. Alu is muted power, while vs team/alu is full power. If you string it right, it gives the best power\/control job available. As gut drops in tension the angle of trajectory rises and it's harder to stop from going long. It doesn't take much for the angle to rise precipitously. Gut is far more susceptible to that deeper shot going out.

Joker used to use the h22, which I have two, at similar set up, 365g and 370 sw. It's a stiff powerful frame, which he is no longer using. He uses the custom lay up, which supposedly is a lot more flexible, at a measured 51RA by Greg Raven, with a babolat RDC at IW. But I don't think that's right. I think it's a lot stiffer, which would explain why he can power the flat shots so well.

Nadals' sw is at 355g, Fed at about 355g, (although Raven says 336g sw, can't be with that lead under the grommet strip) Joker at 370g. Their moment of inertia is also similar, at 20.33-20.65 So the frames are similar in sw, and inertia, and stiffness, if not total mass.

The pop they feel is different, due to frame and string and mass differences. Nadal's feels like a soft light head heavy spinning thud. Fed feels like a stone/powerful small spotted crisp straight ahead controlled and attacking feel. Joker is a crisp/powerful flexible (if the RA is right), bigger sweet spotted, but the h22 he used to use was far crisper and more powerful. Out of the three, Joker is the best in my opinion, mating the string, to the frame, for both power and controlled spin, and Nadal is just strangely a junior set up, while Fed is just too small a sweet spot on too many shots. Of all my frames, I like the h22 the most, as it has the best power/control if strung right. I think joker's Ra is far stiffer than Raven has listed, probably at about the same RA as both Fed and Rafa: 65-66 stiffness. The ra is an abbreviation for racquet stiffness, while vibrated on a machine, with 25g on the frame, measuring frequency of vibration, total mass of frame in a given second. While the ball is on the strings, it's not even enough time for the frame to wobble at all like you see on tv in slo mo, at most about .25 of a single frequency of a wobble, so all you feel after the ball has struck the strings, is mostly a result of the wobble long after the ball has gone and the string has snap backed. All of those little permutations, vibrations, feelings, occur after the ball is long gone and is only fleeting vibrations caused by the collision. The power we feel from gut, the length we feel, the spin from RPM, the teflon slidiness from alu, all happens only as a ripple on the pond of our shots, lessening in strength the further away we get from impact of the ball on the bed. There might be 173 wobbles in a second, most of which occur right after .25 seconds after impact, and then they slow down and lessen to nothing. No wonder every string job feels different. It is. Fed used to have a wider drill pattern with the ncode, than stock, 9 crosses vs. 10 in sweet spot zone.

[tennis_chiro]

Thanks, Geoff.

Thanks, Geoff. This gives a different perspective to trying to understand what the top players are doing; but it also gives some insight into how I recommend my players get their rackets set up. Unfortunately, I am still going to have to study this whole thing a lot more before I can get my head around what the kids need to do. They simply can't afford the daily or maybe even weekly string jobs and certainly not the every 9 game changes the pros are making.

don

[GeoffWilliams]

Then have them try bhbr/bbo, which is soft and long lasting, with good spin and power. Bhbr is $80/reel, and bbo is $215/reel for about $10 set per string job.