Nowadays, the vast majority of players, both amateur and professional, use synthetic material strings, leaving the natural gut string secondary. Obviously, technology advances and new polymers emerge that are cheaper and more durable. But what about the sensations?
In this post, we are going to review the most important aspects of natural gut stringing and we are also going to see what are the advantages and disadvantages of playing tennis with this type of string.
The string
The raw material used in the production of natural casing string, as its name suggests, has not undergone a transformation process, but comes directly from cow casings. In fact, the first strings used in tennis were made of this material and to this day it is still the preferred choice of some players, although it is normal to include it in a hybrid polyester gut string .
Advantage
The benefits that the natural gut brings to our tennis are diverse. These strings are very elastic and give us a pretty good feeling of comfort and power. In that sense, they share certain similarities with the multifilament string, which we remember also came in handy to avoid vibrations in the elbow and prevent injuries. Obviously, the performance of the casing is much better and, in addition, they maintain the tension for longer than any synthetic material.
Drawbacks
Like everything in life, everything has its good part and its bad part, and the natural gut string was not going to be less. First of all, if you want to string your racket with strings of this type, you will have to scratch your pocket a bit, because you will not have an individual set of this material for less than 25 euros. And that’s not the thing, because durability is not the strong point of the natural gut either; its resistance to humidity is very poor and it is much more delicate than other synthetic materials. These disadvantages are compelling reasons for not regularly seeing club players playing with these strings.
