Schleppin' Racquets

Just before the final at Roland Garros, commentary from the booth fixated on Roger Federer's large racquet bag and complemetary sport duffle, which was equally large. The NBC team seemed to think that Fed needed a lot of stuff to spend the afternoon banging groudies with Nadal.

I was reminded of the manner in which arriving on court with one's stuff has changed over the years. These days, I usually walk on court with my modest shoulder bag (Head Pro Team triple, about...eight or nine years old), in which I currently have three racquets, extra grip tape, a towel, some sunscreen, wristbands, a hat, a sweater vest, warmup pants and some backup shirts. I have taken to wearing a Levi's denim jacket because the pockets come in handy and it makes me feel like McEnroe circa 1984. There seem to be two or three dominant ways of takling to the court with one's gear:

•Stroll on with a single racquet, with or without cover, and get a-hittin'

•Bring a racquet and some sort of duffle or backpack, with extra gear

•Do the pro or semi-pro thing and carry a full-blown racquet bag (often, one of the new kinds that have backpack-style straps)

When I was coming up in tennis, the thing to do--to appear fashionably with it--was to have at least two racquets. This was for competition at the junior level up through high school. Sometimes, a kid would have an extra shirt, and maybe a water jug. Later, the sport duffles came into the picture (Pete Sampras carried a big hulking one for his entire career). Then, racquet bags, which were shaped to hold 3-6 frames.

I always sort of regretted that I missed the period when chaps--and what else could you call them?--would saunter onto court, usually a grass or clay court, carrying half a dozen wood racquets in their arms. They would generally be wearing white cotton tennis attire and some sort of blazer, a la Federer's look at last year's Wimbly.

I recall a hilarious documentary on Pancho Gonzales that showed him traveling to Las Vegas for a tournament toward the end of his career, in the early 1970s. He had six or so metal frames, which he taped together before getting on a plane. One at the tourament site. he graciously accepted some kind of swag racquet bag, labeled with the event name, and proceeded to use that to tote his racquets around to his matches.

It's interesting, because nowadays, the pros carry a bunch of racquets on court so they can switch based on tension issues during match. Their racquets are often carefully prepped and customized by specialists, then sealed in plastic. In the old days, a player would typically have a favorite racquet, and he or she would prefer that one for an entire match, switching only if they broke a string or damaged the racquet itself. Of course, there were exceptions. Arthur Ashe reportedly used to go through a racquet (wood) every few weeks, and, when he was playing Wilsons, asked the factory to send him the stiffest racquets they had in the model he preferred, because he would hit the ball so hard he would eventually make the racquet go "whippy." However, in Levels of the Game, John McFee's great book, Ashe says he wasn't as obsessed with racquets as other players of his era. Probably because he went through his too fast to get attached!

Somehow, the pros' connection with their equipment seems a lot less intimate now. Sampras, with his insistence on using only the Pro Staffs that were produced in Wilson's St. Vincent's factory, comes off as the last fetishist. He was also preoccupied with one particular model of shoe...