Although quite tedious process, it's quite rewarding to string the thing and then go and play with it and see what difference the strings make. Now I'm not an ATP tour player, but even I noticed a difference. I'm lucky enough to have 3 rackets, so I have two that have been strung by the club coach for me, and I play okay with them, so having a third racket for experimental purposes is a great help. It means I don't have to restring one I like and risk getting it terribly wrong!
My first shot was with a hybrid mixture of the original Head string that the rackets come with from the factory and a synthetic gut of similar diameter. Tennis strings come in 4 or 5 thicknesses. Then I did it again with the same pattern but a different tension. The third attempt was just the factory string at the recommended tension.
My last try was to use the same pattern the coach uses in my other rackets. I figured that if I could get the same playing characteristics from my stringing as I do from his then I was doing a reasonably good job. I tried it out last week and it was fine. So I'm rather pleased with that.
The question now is how many experiments do I perform? There are so many variations of string from which to choose, one could spend the next year trying new combinations. There are hexagonal and pentagonal profiles, monofilaments and multi-filaments, braided, kevlar, titanium, synthetic and natural gut. And what about colour!! Blue, yellow, gold, red, white, black, natural. So much choice!
For the time being I think I'll stick to the strings I've got, but I might just be tempted to try something new!
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