Over on the Essential Tennis Forums there have been several questions concerning Natural Gut. I thought that I would answer some of them here. Thanks to Phil C. in So Cal for a lot of these questions!
1) What are the most popular brands of natural gut?
The biggest name in natural gut is Babolat. They are also the best. Wilson gut is also good because Babolat makes it for them. Another great brand for natural gut is Bow Brand. They are less known and not as largly distributed, but they make a quality product. There are several other “value” guts out there, but most of them area significant drop off from the big boys.
2) What is natural gut made from?
One of the biggest myths out there is that natural gut is cat gut. The truth is that most natural gut comes from cow intestines, and some from sheep. The myth of cat gut came from the large number of cats that would hang around the string factories looking for the production leftovers.
3) Should I string higher or lower compared to my previous set of XXXX?
Natural gut is a very powerful string, so I normally recommend that people string it a couple pounds higher if they are switching from a synthetic. Most players usually find that natural gut has a softer more elastic feel to it, so we string it a little tighter to give it a stiffer feel.
4) What about playing in damp conditions?
Most of the better natural guts come with a weather coating that will protect the strings from such conditions. If you happen to get caught in a biblical rain storm you will want to keep your strings out of the rain, but this is an extreme situation.
5) How does natural gut hold its tension compared to polys and syn guts?
Natural gut holds its tension remarkably well compared to synthetic strings and much better than polys. All strings experience “tension creep” after stringing. Most synthetics will lose up to 15% of their tension within 24 hours of being strung, and they will continue to lose tension at a much slower rate. Natural gut will only lose 5-8% of its tension in the first 24 hours after stringing, but that is it. Many gut players will tell you that their gut was playing its best right before it broke.
Those are just a few of the popular questions I recieve about natural gut, by no means an exhaustive list. If you have any questions come by the forums and post a message. Ian and I are also working up a contest where you can win a set of natural gut! Stay tuned for more information on that!