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US Open Wed 30th August 2011
Slow morning so far. Just a steady stream of racquets, then Zvonoreva sends in 3 on-courts at once. I get one of them. She uses a Prince Exo Black and Gamma Zo string. The string has been breaking at the grommets all tournament so we have tubing on all of the mains. Tubing an Exo is not the easiest thing to do. There are no traditional grommets to hold the tubing in place so keeping the tubing there while you tension the string is a fiddly exercise. As I am tensioning the 2nd last main the string pops at the tension head. Happy days. She has not given us any spare sets. Well at least she will get 2 of her racquets on time. We spend a few minutes hunting around for some string and find a spare set so I start again. The racquet is bagged 25 minutes after it came in the door.
Ten minutes later she sends back another which I get straight into. And then 5 minutes later she sends another. They have both broken at the top inside the tubing at the head. Ten minutes or so after sending those 2 out she sends back another. The break is in the same spot. There is nothing more we can do to stop the breakage. The string she is using just does not work with the racquet she is using. She has not sent any string in with the racquet. The runner has to go back to the court and get some more from her. As soon as I have the string I start again. As I pull the 4th right main string it snaps inside the tubing. This is funny. We have no more string for her. Even if we did have string it wouldn’t do any good. By this stage she is serving for the match. We all sit and watch hoping that she closes it out. She always has issues with her string breaking at the grommets in her racquet. It is the string not the racquet that is the problem. After the match we do some racquets for her with different string. That should fix the problem.
It is a quiet day. Only about 200 racquets. I spend most of the afternoon sitting around doing the occasional racquet. Ron goes around the room filming all of us stringing. In particular he is looking at our weaving techniques. There are a few different types of weaving. The technique I use is unusual so he has me go in slow motion and then super slow motion so he can see exactly what my hands are doing. Luis is the other guy on the team with a different weave. His hands move up and down like pistons. I could never learn that technique. Ron will be presenting a seminar on weaving techniques at the Grand Slam Stringers Symposium. So our techniques will all be analysed and critiqued.
I have to wait til last of the outside courts are finished before I can go home. They are done by 9.40 so I catch the 10pm shuttle and get home around 10.30. Pizza for dinner then I’m in bed catching up on some sleep. Tomorrow will be my last day stringing. I am looking forward to having a few days off before I fly home.
