Grapplesnake Tour Sniper Review
Grapplesnake Tour Sniper has been my string of choice for the last 2 years. On the surface, it’s just your basic, run of the mill, off-brand poly. But in the racquet, it’s so much more. Tour Sniper is not obviously impressive. Nothing about it stands out. There’s crazy bright colour, no professional endorsements, no ultra-sharp, spin-oriented edges. It’s gimmick free. It’s there for you day-in and day-out. Grapplesnake Tour Sniper is like your best friend with a weight issue, your dog that had its ear bit off by the neighbor’s poodle, your rusty old Honda Civic. It’s there for you for matter what. Even on your most error-prone, foul mouthed, doublefaultingest days. To understand the inner beauty of Grapplesnake Tour Sniper, you have to look at the other top performers in the string market.
A set of Grapplesnake Tour Sniper. Grapplesnake Facebook.
RPM Blast is the popular girl at school. She’s dated the guy with the biggest arms who’s won the French Open like 10 times or something, everyone’s lost count except him. RPM Blast opens epic spin and a solid feel, until her makeup wears off. RPM Blast’s makeup is that silicone coating that decreases the string-on-string friction. A lower coefficient of friction on the strings promotes snapback, the action the slingshot extra spin on every ball. It also allows the string to bend further on contact, tricking amateur players into thinking the string is soft, and good for their arm. Of course, RPM Blast is one of the stiffest strings on the market. For reference, the TWU stiffness index reads 234 for RPM Blast 1.25, compared to Hyper-G 1.25 at 218, Luxilon ALU Power 1.25 at 209 and Head Lynx 1.25 at 179. Once that makeup wears off, the string-on-string friction skyrockets, spin potential flattens and comfort completely disappears. Ever worse, the tension maintenance with RPM Blast is tragic at best. In short, the playability drop off is simply not acceptable for someone who doesn’t want to string every week.
Solinco Hyper-G is another crowd favourite. It’s nuclear green colour is a staple on club, and college, practice courts due to excellent all around performance. Hyper-G is far more complete of a string than RPM Blast, however, something about its composition excels in thinner gauges. In thicker gauges, like 1.25 and 1.30, Hyper-G lacks feel. I don’t get the ballpocketing sensations I need to feel in control of the ball. I find the general “plasticky” feel of Hyper-G to be off putting as well. The string hides vibrations to increase comfort, but those vibrations are a necessary part of feel for my game.
Grapplesnake Tour Sniper feels like an evolved version of Hyper-G. It retains excellent all-around performance while offering the crisp, responsive feel necessary to maintain control. The silver colour of the polyester signals a similar performance to ALU Power or Tourbite, however, it plays much softer, more inline with Tourbite Soft.
ALU Power soft was GrappleSnake’s string target for Tour Sniper. The goal was to develop a string with the same feel and performance as ALU Soft, but with superior tension maintenance and playability duration. This playability duration and tension maintenance is what sets Tour Sniper apart from every other string on the market. It doesn’t wow you out of the gate with silicone infusion, sharp edges or a vibrant colour. It wows after 3 weeks of play when the tension is still controllable and the tension is still playable. Yeah, there’s some notching happening in the mains, but that crisp, responsive feel is still there. Tour Sniper keeps on trucking for hours longer than most other strings.
Playability duration of this calibre is crucial for crappy players like me. I’m not a pro. I shank every other ball. This means I never break strings. I have no need to restring every week if I can avoid it. With Tour Sniper, I can avoid working commuting to the tennis store and spend more time on court.
