Coated tennis string and process for coating

Abstract

A tennis string of gut, nylon, or polyester is coated with skid-proof material to obtain a superior string capable of imparting more spin to a tennis ball with less effort by the player.

Parent Case Text

DESCRIPTION

This application is a continuation-in-part of copending application, Ser. No. 219,580-- filed Jan. 20, 1972, now abandoned.

Description

The invention relates to tennis strings. It is an object of the present invention to provide a superior tennis string, possessing essentially the elastic properties of gut, nylon, or polyester, but which has greater friction against the ball, imparting to it greater spin with less effort. A further object is to provide a tennis string of gut which not only has good elastic properties, but is unaffected by moisture.

In the past, attempts have been made to string tennis racquets with wire, with solid rubber strings, and with wire coated with rubber. None of these attempts have met with any degree of popular success, because of the poor elastic and mechanical qualities of such stringing, and all have long since been abandoned.

At the present time, gut strings are generally considered superior to all others by knowledgable tennis players, and give the best performance on the tennis court. Gut strings provide the best blend of power and control, due to their particular elastic properties.

Nylon strings are also commonly and widely used. They give satisfactory performance, and are cheaper than gut and impervious to moisture. A more recent development is polyester strings, which have been shown to be quite satisfactory, and are rapidly gaining acceptance.

However, one disadvantage of gut, nylon, and polyester strings is that all are inherently slippery and, consequently, inefficient in imparting spin to a tennis ball. Gut has the further disadvantage of being sensitive to moisture.

To the end of overcoming these disadvantages of conventional strings, my invention has been contrived.

The invention, then, is a tennis string composed of gut, nylon, or polyester which has a thin, durable coating of skid-proof rubber, or other skid-proofing coating. It is, of course, to be understood that the coating can be applied either before or after stringing the racquet.

The coating may be of nearly any soft, durable, elastomeric material, e.g., natural or synthetic rubber, urethane rubber, high-density urethane foam, polyvinyl chloride, etc. I prefer to employ a soft, one component, room temperature curing urethane rubber for the coating.

An alternative type of coating could be made by including a granular substance, such as fine silica sand, in a coating material which is not inherently skid-proof, such as an alkyd, or an acrylic. The granular material gives the cured coating a rough surface which is skid-proof.

In the most valuable embodiment of my invention, the coatings are intended to be quite thin, thus assuring that the resulting strings have essentially the same elastic properties as strings entirely composed of gut or nylon or polyester, which properties have been shown to be superior for tennis strings. The skid-proof coating, however, makes these strings more effective in imparting spin to the ball than conventional strings.

A further advantage of the invention is that a rubber coated gut string will be completely impervious to moisture. Yet another advantage is improved abrasion resistance.

As a further improvement to my invention, these rubber coated strings, as described above, can be given a further coating of wax, for ease in stringing a racquet.

Claims

Having thus described the invention, what is claimed as new is:

1. A tennis string of gut, nylon, or polyester, which is coated with a coating resin containing sufficient fine, granular material to significantly increase the friction of string against ball.

2. A process for increasing the effectiveness of a tennis string in imparting spin to a tennis ball comprising applying a soft, skid-proof, elastomeric material, or a coating resin containing sufficient fine, granular material to significantly increase the friction of the string against the ball, to the string after the racquet is strung.

3. The process of claim 2, wherein the skid-proof coating is a soft, elastomeric material.

4. The process of claim 2, wherein the skid-proof coating is a coating resin containing sufficient fine, granular material to significantly increase the friction of the string against the ball.