Mechanism of Tennis Racket Spin Performance

概要

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Players often say that some strings provide a better grip and more spin than others, but ball spin did not depend on string type, gauge, or tension in pervious laboratory experiments. There was no research work on spin to uncover what is really happening during an actual tennis impact because of the difficulty of performing the appropriate experiments. The present paper clarified the mechanism of top spin and its improvement by lubrication of strings through the use of high-speed video analysis. It also provided a more detailed explanation of spin behavior by comparing a racket with lubricated strings with the famous “spaghetti” strung racket, which was banned in 1978 by the International Tennis Federation because it used plastic spaghetti tubing over the strings to reduce friction, resulting in excessive ball spin. As the main strings stretch and slide sideways more, the ball is given additional spin due to the restoring force parallel to the string face when the main strings spring back and the ball is released from the strings. Herein, we also showed that the additional spin results in a reduction of shock vibrations of the wrist joint during impact.