Behind the scenes with the stringing team in Washington

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Stringing racquets isn't an easy job—anyone that's ever tried to do it would know. Usually, it's a task reserved for your nearby tennis shop staff, but on the pro tour, the duties often fall on the Tecnifibre stringing team.

Tecnifibre is a silver partner of the ATP and the producer of the official ATP racquet, string, bag and accessories. They send a team to tournaments all over the world including Delray Beach, Washington, London for the ATP World Tour Finals and Milan for the Next Gen ATP Finals.

In Washington, D.C., a team of five handle both the ATP and WTA players' demands, working on what will end up being approximately 1,000 strung racquets by week's end.

Kei Nishikori is responsible for much of that work. He's famously one of the more particular players on tour when it comes to stringing.

"Guys like Nishikori they change racquets all the time," says Tecnifibre promotion manager Alexandre Papineau. "Even if it's just for practice, he will bring in six racquets with three different tensions. During the match, like at a Grand Slam, he can do 10-12 racquets in a match, and he'll keep on switching."

Each player is different, and at the start of the tournament, the stringing team splits up their duties.

"Each stringer has a team of players and they keep them for the whole tournament," Papineau says. "Sometimes that's kind of unfair because you can arrive at the end of the tournament and one guy is super busy and the other one is just helping cut the stringers and packing the racquet."

In D.C., they made sure that no lone stringer had all of the top threats. Complaints are very rare, but requests for tension changes are common, depending on balls, temperature and elevation. Daniel Nestor is famous for his most unusual tension request, a shockingly low 20 pounds (and 18 pounds for the crosses). Jack Sock had the lowest singles player tension with 35 pounds.

The members of the Tecnifibre team build relationships with the players—some have known the pros since their junior-playing days. From their unique position behind the stringing machine, they can also track changes in the market.

"What's intersting for us after so many years on tour is you can see the evolution..." Papineau says. "You see the tension changes. At the end of the '90s, beginning of 2000s, everyone was jumping to polyester. And now everyone is coming back."

Papineau says only 30-35 percent of women on tour are playing with full string bed of polyester, and it's closer to 45-55 percent for the men. A hybrid string bed of half polyester and half multifilament or natural gut is becoming the norm.

No matter what the request from a player may be, getting it right is an important part of a stringer's job, as well as getting it right fast. A stringer's average speed is four racquets per hour, which includes the stenciling and bagging. The cost is $22 per racquet, which is taken out of each player's prize money earnings.

The hours are long, with the team coming in early in the morning and staying until the last match is finished (in Washington, that's well past midnight). But the rewards are high: plenty of time in or near the player lounges, traveling the globe and in the case of French stringer Stephan Chrzanovski, one-on-one time with Roger Federer.