Today I arrived at the club to find a small black box from Wilson waiting in my mailbox. Like a giddy kid on Christmas I grabbed it with great expectations! Upon opening the box I found a set of string in a very unusual package. There was no literature that came with it, only an imprint on the inside of the box that gave a website (www.wilson.com/newstring) to “fill in the hole.”
After visiting the site I learned that the new string was called Hollow Core, and it offered the ultimate in Control, Power and Playability. Wilson has p
[roduced a string that is in fact hollow on the inside. The core appears to be triangular, and it is wrapped with several multi-filaments, then it is coated to protect the fibers. Interesting… I saw that you could also register for a free set of the string while supplies last, so I had one sent to my house for further testing. Completely intrigued by this new string, I cut the strings out of my Babolat Pure Storm and replaced them with the new Hollow Core.
First Impressions:
The string is crystal colored and felt stiffer to the touch than I thought it would be. With a hollow core I figured it would be very elastic, and soft. This thought was quickly put aside when I made the first pull. The string did not strech nearly as far as I thought it would. It pulled about as far as a normal solid core synthetic would, and it felt stiffer than I thought it would.
Ease of Stringing:
The coating on the outside of the strings made the string smooth but not slippery. There was good grip and the strings slid through the grommetts and main strings with ease. There was no friction burn to make mention of. I also thought that a hollow core string would be more fragile. There was very little marking from the clamps, and no indentions were made.
After stringing the Pure Storm at 63 pounds, I put the racquet on the Diagnostic Center to check what the stringbed stiffness would be measured at. I was amazed when the result was 69/100. This is the kind of stringbed stiffness that you would expect from a polyester stringjob, not what appears to be a basic synthetic gut, much less with a hollow core! Wondering whet type of tension creep there would be I set the racquet aside for an hour and checked the stringbed stiffness again… 65/100 a slight drop, but we’ll keep an eye on it throughout the day.
Thusfar these strings have defied my initial thoughts… I am really looking forward to getting out on the court this afternoon to give them a good playtest!
More to come soon!
