String Tension vs/ power

Joe,

The reference that you might be looking for is in Prof. Howard Brody's
book "Tennis Science for Tennis Players". Howard is the physicist on the
USTA's sport science committee and also on the ITF's technical committee.

The book has several pages devoted to the subject and the explanation is
much more complete, but in a nutshell: balls are by design not meant to
store and return energy (they lose energy when they deform - either on the
racquet or on the ground). Strings are by design meant to return most of
the energy they absorb on impact with the ball and this is done when the
strings deflect. The looser the strings (to a limit, you wouldn't string
the racquet like a butterfly net is the example in the book) the more the
strings deflect and absorb energy from the ball, and the less the ball
deforms so the ball loses less energy.

I guess I would also mention if anyone is interested that we have
supported a tennis science web site for a few years and although we don't
have any information on this particular subject on it we do have a lot of
tennis science information on the site. http://wings.ucdavis.edu/Tennis

                                        Regards,

                                        Jani Pallis





Received on Tue Aug 22 2000 - 06:57:47 CDT