In Monte-Carlo, players are the stars but what people may not know is that backstage their racquets have a life of their own!
STRINGING AT THE HEART
The player might be under the spotlight, but his racquet is also part of the show! Official string Stephane Chrzanovski and his colleagues are making sure that each racquet comes back to its owner in the most perfect state of performance. In the Tecnifibre booth, it is non-stop. "we are the first ones to arrive on the tournament and often the last ones to leave. We're here before 8am, finishing up racquets for matches, for practices and then it goes on and on. During the day, coaches or someone from their staff are more often the ones who come give us racquets, but in the morning it often happens that players come themselves to drop them, and allow us to have a quick chat".
Once the racquet is there, the whole process can start. "The first day, we receive about 150 racquets, so we need to be extremely organized. You cannot put the wrong logo on a racquet!". When Stephane gets a racquet, the player has communicated the desired tension, but he also knows the player's habits. "Truth of today is not truth of tomorrow. Yesterday we went for 24kg but today it is hotter, so the player is going to want 25kg instead." And the official stringer needs to know everything on everything! "You need to know all the products because all the players and all the brands are coming to us." There is a mandatory trust between stringers and players. "We understand that we are also doing something very important for them and for the good run of the tournament.".
PLAYERS AND STRINGERS: A RELATIONSHIP BASED ON TRUST
"During matches we are being given some racquets back because a string broke or the player needs another tension. We receive a message from the supervisor, then the ball kid comes with the racquet(s) and we then have to be quick in order to get the racquet back to the player asap. All of this needs to be done in less than 15 minutes: getting the strings off, registering the racquet in the computer, cleaning it, stringing it, putting the logo and then send it back".
This racquet that comes to the stringer is also sometimes saved by this professional who does not shy away from giving advices. "In Monte-Carlo, the humidity is huge and we still have players using natural gut which absorbs it a lot and it can make the string break very quickly. So it is better to string those racquets in the morning than the day before. Pierre-Hugues Herbert uses natural gut but also likes to string his racquets the day before, so I just told him. He then realized it by testing it out, and now follows our advice!".
This racquet's dancing is being displayed in front of the crowd who loves it: "Sometimes we hear some "Wow, it is Gasquet's racquet!" (easy to recognize because of the handle)." Through the days, stringers also get to know more about the players' private lives: "We can see the written messages left on the racquets by the guys or the pictures drawn of their families. In those cases especially you do not want to damage it!"
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