Tag: squash racquets

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How to Choose a Squash Racquet

TECNIFIBRE CARBOFLEX 125S SQUASH RACQUET
If you are planning to play long term, purchase a racquet from a pro shop that stocks replacement parts.
In deciding which racquet you should choose for squash, you first question should be this: how often do I intend to play?

If the answer is: I am not sure I will even be playing squash six months from now, then it really doesn’t matter which racquet you buy nor does it matter where you buy it from.

If, however, the answer is: I intend to play often because I love this game and want to commit to it, then the best racquet for you is one that you can repair.

In case you don’t already know this: squash racquets break. It’s not usually the frame that breaks, although those will break sometimes too. Most often, the parts that break are the grommets and the bumper guards.

Once these parts break, your racquet become a string eaters. The older it gets, the more string it eats and the more it costs to maintain.

Replacing these parts is essential if you want to keep your overall stringing costs down.

So the first question you should ask yourself about choosing a squash racquet is: how often to I intend to play. If the answer is “lots” then you want to get a racquet that you can get parts for.

Almost automatically, this leads to one important conclusion: avoid general sporting goods stores. Most of the squash racquets in these stores are SMUs or Special Make Ups.

Special Make Ups are racquets that look almost identical to the brand’s core products, but are specially made for the general sporting goods store. These racquets are not available to pro shops, specialty stores or competitors. This means that the parts to repair them are not available either.

So if your goal is to buy a squash racquet you can repair, you’d better think carefully about where to buy it. Pro shops and specialty racquet stores tend to stock parts for the racquets they sell. At least, the good ones do.

Unlike general sporting goods stores which only want your racquet business, pro shops and racquet stores want your stringing business. In order to earn your business, they sell both the racquets and the parts needed to repair them. This saves you money and gives you an opportunity play with your favorite racquet for several years.

Supported Squash Racquets

Racquet Network supports all racquets in the Tecnifibre ™ Carboflex series. Customers who purchase racquets in this series from us can count on parts support for the three years the racquet is available plus up to three additional years after the racquet is discontinued.

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.
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Why Do Strings Break?

Squash racquet with broken string
When a string breaks, don’t assume that your stringer did something wrong.
Here at Racquet Network, our stringers re-string nearly 2000 racquets a year. Less than a dozen racquets a year come back for warranty repairs.

This means that 99.994% of the racquets we repair are fine while 0.006% experience premature string breakage.

Yet in almost every one of the 0.006% of cases where strings break prematurely, the customer wants to blame us for doing something wrong. They seem to believe that when a string breaks, it has to be somebody’s fault.

This is a primer for those folks. The purpose of this article is to share our considerable experience about why strings break and to help players understand why this happens to them.

Don’t Take it Personally

The first thing to understand is that it’s not personal. Nobody is picking on you. It’s not a conspiracy.

All strings break eventually. Sometimes they break the first time you use them. Sometimes they last for years. When a racquet is strung, nobody knows how long it is going to last.

Your racquet might be in the 99.994% that are fine or it might be in the 0.006% that break prematurely. There is simply no way to know.

Even a perfect racquet that is perfectly strung by the world’s best stringer with the world’s best string on the world’s best stringing machine under perfect conditions can break the very first time you hit a ball or a shuttle with it. That’s a coincidence, not a conspiracy.

That said, however, there are come common causes for string breakage that we see regularly.

Racquet Maintenance Issues

Most often, the problem is with the bumper guard or grommets on the racquet itself. If grommets are broken, the graphite from the frame will cut through the string. If you are using a soft multifilament string like Tecnifibre ™ 305 or DNAMX, your string life can be extremely short.

The same is true for broken bumper guards. If the string in a racquet is passing over jagged pieces of bumper guard, there is a high likelihood that your strings will break prematurely. This is also true if missing pieces of bumper are exposing the string to wall/floor strikes on the outside of the frame.

Customer Usage

The second most common cause of string breakage is directly related to how customers use string. In squash, for example, we commonly see problems with men who overpower their string by literally hitting the ball much harder than they need to.

In this case, the story goes something like this.

A guy buys a squash racquet with thick, low grade factory string. He plays squash for a while and learns to serve overhand and to hit the ball really, really hard. Since the factory strings that were in the racquet when he purchased it are thick and designed for durability rather than playability, the player experiences no consequences for hitting this hard.

Eventually, however, the strings in the racquet break and the player brings the racquet in for re-stringing. For whatever reason, he decides to go with a highly playable string like Tecnifibre 305 or DNAMX, which are both playable but not very durable. So to nobody’s surprise, he goes out onto the court, pounds his first serve and immediately breaks his expensive new string.

Nobody is at fault here. This is simply physics. The strength of the player overpowers the strength of the string. This string is designed for professional squash players who consistently hit the ball in the centre of the stringbed. It is not designed for overhead pounders who hit the ball hard and off centre.

This is our second most common cause of string breakage; it is a player/string mismatch. The player and the string are both fine on their own; they are just wrong for each other.

This player needs a durable string, not a playable string. Once this is determined, we can advise players in this group to go with a more durable string, like Ashaway ™ Supernick XL Titanium.

The important thing to understand here is that nobody can know that the player and the string are wrong for each other until they try to play together. This is a matter of trial and error. Until they try, the error cannot be detected.

Conclusion

So the next time your string breaks prematurely, please don’t jump immediately to the conclusion that your stringer did something wrong. Given how we do things in our shop, this is highly unlikely and we suspect this is true for most professional stringers. A more likely explanation is that something else is at fault. Just bring your racquet in for us to look at. We will probably be able to figure out what happened and we will probably be able to help put you back into the 99.994% group.

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Squash Racquets With One-Year Warranties

Wilson Blade YL squash racquet
All Wilson squash racquets are protected by a one year warranty against manufacturer’s defects.
Breaking a brand new squash racquet is frustrating. It is even more frustrating when that racquet is not covered by a warranty.

Due to the nature of the game of squash, most squash racquets are not covered by warranties. In fact, among the many brands that we carry, only Wilson offers a one year warranty against manufacturer’s defects.

What does this mean? It means that if the racquet breaks because of a flaw in its production, Wilson will replace it, subject to standard conditions, of course.

The first condition is that it must be inspected by their warranty department. If they conclude that it broke due to a manufacturer’s flaw, they will replace it with the same or something comparable.

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.

Squash Racquets with One Year Warranties

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.
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Head Heavy Squash Racquets

Alpha Racquet Balancer
Check your racquet balance in-store
Head heavy squash racquets are preferred by players who want additional power from their racquet. While lower level players seem to be attracted to head light racquets because they believe that the lighter head will allow them to hit harder, the opposite is generally true. The more head heavy a squash racquet is, the more powerful it will be.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of squash racquets in the marketplace are head heavy. Even most of the frames that are marketed as “head light” are, in fact, head heavy. We can say this with certainty because every squash racquet that comes through our store is put on a racquet balancer where we consistently find that frames that claim to be head light are actually head heavy.

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.

Some Head Heavy Squash Racquets

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.
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Head Light Squash Racquets

Alpha Racquet Balancer
Check your racquet balance in-store
Head light squash racquets are most suitable for high level players capable of extremely fast swing speeds. While lower level players seem to be attracted to head light racquets because they believe that the lighter head will allow them to hit harder, the opposite is generally true. The lack of weight increases the speed of the swing but the reduced weight of the head reduces overall power generation.

Furthermore, while there are a lot of squash racquets on the market that claim to be head light, few actually are. Buyer beware. The balance printed on the vast majority of squash racquets is misleading and often wrong. Racquet Network has a balance beam available in-store for customers who want to check the actual balance of the racquets we sell.

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.

Some Head Light Squash Racquets

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.