Tennis: Some Steel

Sport may be mostly a matter of muscle, but a little science sometimes goes a long way. A 17-ft. pole vault is common enough today, but was utterly inconceivable before the invention of the fiber-glass jumping pole. The latest sport to feel the impact of technology is tennis, in which almost any change is a change for the better.

Most of the contestants in last week’s U.S. National Championships were equipped with standard rackets made of laminated wood. But a trio of U.S. players came armed with new “T2000” steel rackets,* designed by France’s Rene (“The Crocodile”) Lacoste, and marketed in the U.S. by the Wilson Sporting Goods Co. Gene Scott, 29, a Manhattan lawyer who never before had gotten past the quarter-finals of any major tournament, astounded the experts by reaching the semifinals before losing to Australia’s top-seeded John Newcombe. Clark Graebner, a 23-year-old Ohioan who only two months ago was eliminated in the very first round of the national clay-court championships, got all the way to the finals, where he gave Newcombe a tussle before succumbing.

Then there was Billie Jean King. Last July, Billie Jean won the Wimbledon women’s singles title; last week she added the U.S. crown to her collection, winning every set in six matches.

No Elbows. The new racket that Scott, Graebner and King used at Forest Hills looks for all the world like an oversized tea strainer. Made of tubular, chromium-plated steel, it is far more flexible than a wooden racket; its open-throat construction permits a faster swing with less effort. “It feels like a feather,” says Billie Jean. Scott says the T2000 gives him a faster serve and better control on volleys. To Graebner, the T2000 has therapeutic value. Plagued for months by a painful case of “tennis elbow,” he switched from wood to steel in July and the pain disappeared. The steel racket seems to absorb most of the ball’s impact instead of transmitting the shock through the handle to a player’s arm.

Not everybody who has tried the T2000 swears by it. “You have to learn to adjust your swing,” admits Scott. “With a wooden racket, you may take a 1½-yard backswing to hit the ball to a specific point on the court. With steel, you may have to cut that backswing in half to hit that same point.” For ordinary players, the T2000 might be a trifle expensive, costing up to $55 (strung with top-grade gut) compared with $35 for a good wooden racket. Even so, Wilson already has sold several thousand T2000s, says its sales director, “and our branches are besieging the factory for more.”

* Perfectly legal under tennis rules, which specify the size, weight and bounceability of the ball, but say nothing about the racket.