How often should you replace the strings in your tennis racket?

The truth is, strings wear down from play, lose their elasticity and tension and ultimately if left too long can have a negative impact on your play and your body.

Your tennis strings begin to lose their tension very quickly after your re-string. In the first 24 hours after stringing strings can lose roughly 10% of their tension and this reduction in tension continues as time goes by and you get out on the court and start hitting. This will have an impact on your level of play but can also cause tennis elbow.

I would suggest that each year you should get them replaced at least the amount of times you are playing each week. While the stringing your racquet as many times per year as you play per week can be misleading for many players, the concept of restring based on your frequency of play is spot on.

For example, if you’re actually lucky enough to play 7 days a week you’d only be restringing every 52 days, which is quite a long time to go at that frequency of play. Many players would break a string before they even hit the 52 day mark.

If you’re looking for a general rule purely based on frequency I’d say take the number of times you play per week and double that number to find out roughly how many times per year you should have a re-string.

That means if you’re playing 7 days a week you should restring about once a month. Based on my experience that makes a heck of a lot more sense.

Of course, if you’re playing 7 days a week for 30 minutes vs. 7 days a week for 3 hours you’ll still have to make a judgment call on how fresh and consistent you want the tension of your strings to be.

The other things to consider would be what level of tennis are you playing? What is your style of play? If you hit the ball flat you are less likely to break a string and end up leaving them in your racket for too long. If the tension of your strings start to drop you will be compensating with your technique to keep the ball in. If you hit with heavy top spin you will achieve less spin and again you will change your technique to reduce your errors.

We offer a racket re-stringing service at Cranleigh. If you haven’t had your strings replaced for over 12 months I would suggest that you should consider getting them replaced but it is entirely up to you.

How the rackets feels when you hit the ball is 50% from the strings and 50% from the frame. You could have the same racket with different stings and tensions and they would play like different rackets.

Let us know if you would like any advise about getting your racket restrung.

Strings and Prices

Prince Tour 16                                                £22.00      
Hard/Durable/Spin/Control/Less Feel/Loses Tension

Prince Control 16                                           £25.00
Soft/ Great Playability/ Feel/Not Durable For Heavy Topspin Players

Prince Control 17                                           £25.00      
Soft/ Great Playability/ Feel/Not Durable For Heavy Topspin Players

Prince Syn Gut w/Duraflex 16                    £20.00      
Soft/ Medium Durability/ Holds Tension
“Most popular Synthetic Gut in the world”

Hybrid – Mix of 2 strings                             £22.50