There is not yet much color in the grass. Next week promises to be a break out week for fans of spring.
Tennis was on the agenda again this morning. I finished the four straight day marathon with a bit of energy left. The idea of getting a new racket has faded and instead, I'm getting new strings in my back-up racket and perhaps promoting it to the A team. The strings are brand name Dual made by Babolat, the tennis racket company. It's the same string as in the racket that I'm currently playing with, and it has pretty good "feel" to it. And as Fred Stolle said, "If you're winning with a racquet, don't switch."
The full quote from Fred Stolle (Australian tennis great): The most valuable advice I can give to anyone is do not change racquets unless you know the racquet you are switching to can definitely help you. The money for racquet endorsements is not huge anyway so it's not really worth it. I played with a Dunlop from age 12 until I turned pro in 1967. Then I changed racquets and back then there was only like $6,000 in it to play with a Spalding and Dunlop, who I had been with, couldn't match that offer. So I changed racquets and it was probably the worst decision I made in my entire career because I did not play well with the Spalding. You thought the racquet was the same, it was about the same weight, but you played with it and it was not the same. That happened to a lot of players. When Laver switched from Dunlop, even Laver struggled. He was winning every event, he switched from Dunlop and it hit the fan. He took those aluminum racquets and tossed them into a lake in Louisville and then went back to Dunlop with the new logo painted on, which as you know still happens to this day. If you're winning with a racquet, don't switch.
3 comments:
Personally, for $6,000 I would absolutely totally switch.
You must be on the other side of a ridge or front, or something. It's colder than blue blazes here. It's supposed to warm up some throughout the week, but it was in the single digits here this morning.
I promise I won't change racquets. Or rackets, either.
That is a lot of money to switch rackets, but not quite as much proportionately to Stolle. He took a bigger hit on prize money, probably, even in the lower money days when he was playing on the tour.
I might do it for $6,000, too, but no one has offered .... yet.
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