Tutorial on Stringing Tennis Rackets

Series Summary

Tennis originated in Europe in the late 1800s and spread quickly throughout the English-speaking world, particularly among the wealthy. It is now an Olympic sport and is played by people in many countries and social classes. Played on a flat court made of grass, clay or concrete, tennis players use stringed rackets to pass a rubber, felt-covered ball back and forth over a net. The rules of tennis and the basic techniques have remained relatively unchanged since the beginning of the game. In this free video series, a USPTA certified tennis pro provides information on tennis equipment. Find out how to rewrap a tennis racket handle, how to buy a racket for beginners and how to tell if a tennis ball has enough bounce. Learn about tennis teaching aids, the fuzz on tennis balls and why tennis balls are yellow. Get help with tennis equipment by following the advice from these free videos.

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Lincoln Ward. I am the director of the Austin Tennis Center here in Austin, Texas. Today we're going to do a tutorial on stringing rackets. The first thing you want to do when you have your racket needs to be restrung is clip the strings out of your racket. You can't reuse the racket, reuse the strings, you have to replace the strings all together. You're going to clip the strings starting from the middle and working your way out. As soon as you do that you want to go ahead and place the racket onto your stringer. Keeping it nice and firm in the mounts. The next thing you do is take the string you're going to use and measure the correct amount of string you want for the first half of your mains. Each racket has it's own tension range. You can find that range generally on the inside of the throat right here. This one is between 55 and 70 lbs of pressure. When you string a racket you're going to start from the center and work your way out on the mains. Here we can first un-clamp it at the top and the bottom. This clamp is free moving until you tighten the base. The base tightens first and then the string clamp tightens after that. You can move it to where you want to tighten the string. First tighten your string and clamp or you can do it vis versa. and now you have your pressure on the string. Keep that on until you've got your next string. And then once your finished with your first half of your mains you're going to tie the knot off as you would see here. You're going to find the large grommet, which is this one right here, and stick the racket string through there, tight, and do a figure-eight knot. Nice and tight. That's your starting knot. And you can go right here. So this racket went this direction, tied the knot right here, and then went this direction and then started off, this one started off at the bottom and zigzagged up. If you're starting you want to do just the opposite that you did the string before. Let me finish and I'll show you what I'm talking about. Now, you always wanna, if the string before is over the main then the next one has to be underneath. So what you want to do is you want to start off on top every single time so you'll finish on bottom. That way when you come across again you can go on top and you'll finish on bottom over here. So it's just a, making sure you zigzag every single, every single main string so you are alternating over and under until you've tied that, the remaining cross right here.You always want to make sure you, when you're pulling the tension on your strings to clamp the string after you're finished pulling tension to keep that tension from going slack in your racket again. My name is Lincoln Ward and that's a tutorial on stringing rackets."