What's the Racket?

Size Matters dept.

Until the 1970s, tennis rackets were pretty standard.

They were made of wood, which was heavy.

Then, Rene Lacoste designed the Wilson T2000, made of steel, which was very powerful and very inaccurate, and pretty much ignored by everybody except Jimmy Connors, who was very talented, and a bunch of high school players, who were not.

In the late ‘70s, Prince came out with the first oversize racket. Everyone who used one was immediately made fun of, until they started winning matches, at which point pretty much everyone tried it.

The only problem with the Prince, made of aluminum, was that it was heavy.

Then, the Head ski company got into the game, and started making rackets with the same stuff with which they were making skis. Fiberglass, graphite, and the like.

These materials allowed for rackets to be bigger but also lighter, a lethal combination.

At that stage there were no regulations on how big a racket could be.

It wasn’t long before Serik Serik, a mildly gifted player from Kazakhstan, with a world ranking of #862, showed up with a racket as wide as the net itself, and 25 feet high.

It was made of graphene, ten times stronger than steel but with only 5% of its density. Crafted in a military laboratory in Shymkent, the racket was strung with goat intestine, and debuted in 1979 in the Swedish Open in Bastad.

Serik Serik in 1979. (artist’s rendition)

Serik would tap in his serve, then run to the net, angle the racket down slightly, and simply stand there while the opponent would bash ball after ball into Serik’s racket, finally missing or simply tiring out.

On serve returns, Serik would hold the racket in front of him, angled toward the court, and follow his return to the net where the same pattern would ensue.

In the semifinals in Bastad, Serik defeated Corrado Barazzuti, 6-4, 6-3, then took down Bjorn Borg in the finals, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Serik was next entered in the Monte Carlo Open, and played Guillermo Vilas in the first round.

The first set went to Serik, 6-2. However, in between sets, the International Tennis Federation held an emergency meeting, and rammed in new regulations regarding racket size, standards which basically hold to this day.

Forced to play with a regular racket, Serik lost to Vilas, 2-6, 6-1, 6-0. Being denied his beloved үлкен ракетка, or “big racket,” was devastating to Serik, and he quickly dropped out of the top 1,000. He became a goat farmer and for many years supplied the Kazakh Davis Cup team with goat intestine for strings.

You can still play with a pretty big racket. The Gamma RZR Big Bubba is the maximum size allowed. But it’s not even close to the үлкен ракетка which Serik Serik used back in 1979.

I guess it’s a good thing the ITF stepped in and outlawed the үлкен ракетка.

But I have to say. There are some days when I could really use that sucker.

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“Jack Kramer Wood Racket”:

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