Phantom camera
is used to characterize performance of
Power Angle ® diagonally strung tennis rackets
Vision Research high-speed Phantom cameras used to identify performance advantages of tennis racket stringing patterns.
Tennis is a game of speed, agility and precision. The sport requires a significant amount of concentration and hand-eye coordination, especially when your opponent serves a felt tennis ball in your direction at speeds upwards of 120 miles-per-hour! It’s also a sport known for its subsequent injuries, especially lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow), which affects 40 percent to 50 percent of tennis players. That being said, those who take to the court are always in search of ways to reduce stress and potential injury, as long as the solution doesn’t sacrifice performance.
Reassessment and modifications to tennis equipment, namely the racket, have been the focus of many manufacturers and professionals over the years, with a significant amount of attention falling on the stringing pattern, where the impact with the tennis ball actually takes place. Besides the obvious advantages yielded by high-performance, lightweight composite materials such as graphite – used in the construction of the racket frame – and the benefits of natural gut and synthetic gut (nylon) for stringing, many tennis players feel that employing a diagonal stringing pattern can effectively reduce vibration, a leading cause of tennis elbow. Diagonal stringing, a method consisting of opposite pairs of equal strings, has been developed to reduce harmful vibrations without compromising the performance offered by a conventional (perpendicular) pattern.
To clearly identify the benefits of each stringing pattern, Vision Research
worked alongside Micah Joselow*, a junior at Ossining High School, in Ossining, N.Y., who spearheaded a scientific research project focused on highlighting the characteristics of a PowerAngle diagonally-strung racket versus a conventionally strung racket. Vision Research provided Joselow with a high-speed, Phantom v7.1 digital camera, which was utilized to record the interaction of a projected tennis ball with each racket. Joselow’s findings were impressive and in recognition of his work, the project took first place honors in the Physics category at the Westchester Science and Engineering Fair (WESEF) and won the prestigious Yale Science and Engineering Award.