Is Your Racquet a String Eater?

Take a good look at the racquet in the image at the top of this article. It won’t take you long to see why the string broke where it broke.

It broke because the grommet for that string hole is both crushed and split. Two holes to the left of that, another grommet is broken.

You can see that we slid the separated grommet down the string to provide a landmark for another image of the same racquet from a different angle which is posted a little further down this page.

If you find that image, you will be a able to see what is happening on the outside of the racquet, which is the other side of the hole where the string broke.

Why did the grommet split? Probably because the bumper guard broke. Why did the bumper guard break? Because the player hit the wall.

Did either of these happen because of something the racquet stringer did six weeks ago when he strung the racquet for the client?

Absolutely not. Yet the customer’s first instinct when the string broke was to blame us.

We didn’t use the racquet. We didn’t break the bumper guard. We didn’t split the grommet.

The customer did it. He hit the wall. Hitting the wall broke the bumper guard. Breaking the bumper guard weakened the grommet. The grommet split, exposing the soft string to the hard graphite edge of the racquet frame. Then eventually, the string broke in exactly that spot.

These events may not have happened on the same day. Each may have occurred days or weeks apart. But each event led to the other and the end result was a broken string.

So before you blame the professional who strung your racquet, ask yourself this question: is my racquet a string eater?

If you have a broken bumper guard, your racquet is a string eater. If you have broken grommets, your racquet is a string eater. If your grommets are split but not fully broken, your racquet is on its way to becoming a string eater.

If your racquet is a string eater and you want to keep it you have two choices. Either fix it or be prepared to feed it a lot of string.

Don’t blame us. We will always advise you to fix rather than feed a string eater. In fact, we carry a lot of parts just so you have the option of fixing it.

Outfitting a racquet with a new bumper guard and grommets costs about $20.00, parts and labour included. However, if your racquet is a string eater, doing this could save you many times that amount.