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Day 7 – Wed 24th August 2011
My new cutters have tasted blood. I returned from breakfast to find a racquet waiting for me and due to be picked up in 10 minutes. I cut the string a little too hastily and went through my finger. One of the downsides of cutters with razor sharp tips is that they go through skin with ease. My old cutters have blunt tips but they don’t give the sort of finish on the string tip that I like. So there I am stringing away bleeding all over the place but I didn’t have time to stop. One of the guys patched me up while I was stringing. Great start to the day.
We have been busy in patches today. We work hard for a bit then get to chill out. At 11.55am 2 racquets came in for me which were due in an hour. Easy. Ten minutes later another racquet came in for me also due at 1. So now I have to start working fast. After completing the first 2 another one comes in also due ASAP. At 5 minutes past one I am bagging up the last of the four racquets. Four racquets in just over an hour but I really cruised on the last one.
We have a quality control supervisor here. Yat has trained many of the stringers in this room. If he doesn’t like something or the racquets are not good enough he will let you know and you will have to redo them. The tiniest thing like an imperfect knot or the strings not laying perfectly along the frame is enough to warrant another restring. He checks all series racquets. A series of racquets is 2 or more racquets for the same player. If they are to be at the same tension then they have to ping exactly. If they are at different tensions then have to ping differently. If they are not perfect then they get done again. If the strings are not straight you will know about it. Thus far I have escaped his wrath. As well as being the quality controller he is also there to answer any technical questions we have. I have had to ask a lot of questions. Knot placement is critical. Although we have a specific pattern to follow, there a lot of exceptions with respect to knot placement. The type of racquet we are stringing and also the type of string we are using affects where the knot will go. We will use different knot placement on the same racquet depending on the string that is going into it.
For the first 4 days of the tournament we have strung 754 racquets. This is 68 more racquets than were done by the same stage last year. Our biggest day so far was Monday. We did 295 racquets that day. I did 26 racquets that day. The most racquets I have done in a day is 46. That was in Sydney a couple of years ago. 20 – 30 racquets a day is comfortable. 15 racquets a day is like a holiday.
I have been stringing a lot of K Blades. There are quite a few of the pink blades being used, even by guys. I have not done a Head Prestige yet. This is a good thing. There a few of them coming in for stringing but none have been allocated to me. The Prestige is my least favourite racquet to string.
It was an early finish for me tonight. I caught the 9pm shuttle back to the hotel and was showered and relaxing by 10.
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Shane Mikic is the pro-shop manager for the Tennis Gear stores and their online store www.tennisgear.com.au in Brisbane. He has over 16 years racquet stringing experience and is currently part of the Wilson Global Stringing Team at the 2011 US Open. The following blog shares his experiences during his time in the Wilson Stringing room.
