What is the BEST Tennis String?

If you Google, “Best Tennis String,” you’ll likely come across three big names:

• Solinco Hyper-G

• Babolat RPM Blast

• Luxilon ALU Power

Even if you read the thousands of reviews on these strings, you’ll find mostly positive feedback from the majority of tennis players. So what exactly separates these strings from the rest? Performance? Science? Innovation?

Well, kind of, but really, it’s just your classic marketing.

Why People Love Luxilon ALU Power

Luxilon was the first company to manufacture a polyester tennis string in the 1990’s. Poly’s offer one major benefit over the natural gut, nylon synthetic gut and kevlar/aramid strings that were being used by pro’s and club players at the time. That one key benefit is spin. Polyester tennis strings offer significantly more spin potential than any other string. This allowed players to turn defense into offense in a heartbeat.

Suddenly, the dominant serve and volley players like Pete Sampras couldn’t smother their opponents to death by rushing to the net. With slowing court speeds and this new, spin friendly string, rivals suddenly had the time and ability to hit miracle passing shots, finding new angles to pass even the most elite serve and volley players. By the mid 2000’s, nearly every professional tennis player was using polyester tennis strings in either a full bed, or in a hybrid with natural gut.

Most of the pro’s were using some variation of Luxilon ALU Power, as it was widely regarded as the best feeling and more powerful polyester tennis string on the market. Part of this is due to the addition of aluminum into the polyester mix. While this might have seemed like a gimmick at the time, additives and dyes impact the playability of a string. For example, strings like Solinco Tour Bite and Grapplesnake Tour Sniper share the same silver colour and aluminum additive as ALU Power, and thus exhibit that same crisp, responsive feel.

One exception was Rafael Nadal.

Why People Love Babolat RPM Blast

When Nadal first played Federer in 2004, it was clear that Nadal was special. Not only did Nadal beat Federer, the world number 1 at the time, but he did so with the most ruthless, physical and spin-oriented game that we’ve ever seen.

At the time, Nadal was using Babolat Duralast. Duralast was boring, first generation polyester string that wasn’t even selling that well. Babolat even went so far as to produce Duralast in a special yellow colour, mimicking their best seller, Pro Hurricane Tour, to try to sell more units.

With Nadal’s rise to world number one in 2008, it was a perfect opportunity for Babolat to develop a unique string centered around Rafa’s spin-heavy game. In 2010, they released Babolat RPM Blast, a uniquely black polyester string that featured two big innovations over Luxilon ALU Power.

First, RPM Blast is an 8 sided, gear shaped extrusion. The edges of the string create more friction between the ball and the string. This extra grip increases the efficiency of the energy transfer from your racquet to the ball, creating more spin when compared to your standard round poly’s like ALU Power.

The second innovation was a silicone coating around the outside of the string. This reduces the friction between the main strings, which travel vertically up the racquet face, and the cross strings, which travel horizontally. Reduced friction between the mains and crosses promotes what we call snapback.

How Polyester Strings Create Spin

Snapback is the key to spin in all polyester tennis strings. Poly’s are all more slippery than other string materials, like gut, nylon or aramid. If you’ve ever played with an old tennis racquet or a cheap one from a department store, you might have seen that the strings move out of place after you hit the ball. This is why tennis players used to always straighten their strings between points. This doesn’t happen as much anymore because polyester is so stiff and slippery that the string slides right back into place.

The thing is, polyester strings don’t just casually slide back into place at their leisure. They slide back into place at the exact instant that the ball leaves the stringbed. This is where the extra spin comes from. When the main string snaps back into place, it grips the ball and applies additional rotational force on the ball.

This is why those 8 grippy edges are so helpful with RPM Blast. The other innovation, the silicone coating, helps the string slide even back faster, so less energy is lost to friction and more energy can be transferred into the ball.

The Problem with RPM Blast and ALU Power

To this day, RPM Blast is still used by some of the game’s top players, including Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz. ALU Power is still tremendously popular as well, with great such as Djokovic, Murray and Federer using it in the rough variation. The problem with both Luxilon ALU Power and Babolat RPM Blast is that they don’t actually last very long.

This isn’t really a problem with ALU Power or RPM Blast specifically.

It was only recently that poly’s became capable of holding tension for more than a few hours. If you watch the pro’s play, they actually rarely break their strings anymore, but you can still see them changing their racquets around every 9 games. This is because the polyester strings lose their tension so quickly. The problem is that polyester is not a very elastic material when compared to nylon or natural gut. This means that once the string is stretched, it's not very good at returning to its original length.

But in 2015, things started to change.

Why People Love Hyper-G

8 years ago, a small company called Solinco released a string called Hyper-G. With its vibrant green colour, Hyper-G was easily identifiable both on TV and in-person. Interestingly, Solinco opted for a bottom-up marketing strategy.

They sponsored tons of the top US College teams, instead of top professional players like Luxilon and Babolat did. Suddenly, all the best players and coaches in our communities were using this vibrant green string. Since we all knew that the college kids and community coaches weren’t changing their strings every 30 minutes the way the top pro’s do, we also knew that this mysterious green string needed looking in to. What Hyper-G brought to the table compared to these other strings was tension maintenance.

They actually lasted in your racquet, offering excellent spin and sufficient power for most people’s needs over a 4-5 hour period, rather that the 1-2 two most people where getting.

So What’s Should You Buy?

So between these three strings, which one should you go with?

ALU Power for feel?

RPM Blast for spin?

Hyper-G for durability?

Well, the answer is probably none of them. It’s been 8 years since Hyper-G came out, and other companies have had 8 years to catch up. Neither ALU Power or RPM Blast will play their best for more than an hour or two in your racquet, and they are some of the most expensive polyester strings you can buy.

My favourite strings today are Solinco Confidential, Tourna Silver 7 Tour and Grapplesnake Tour Sniper. These three strings offer a feel that’s similar enough to ALU Power, spin that’s near enough to RPM Blast and they maintain tension twice as long as Hyper-G.

But polyester strings really aren’t for everyone. Remember what makes them so special? It takes a lot of force to get those stiff polyester strings to snapback.

In general, I believe that nylon strings are a better choice for most beginner and intermediate players. You’ll get better comfort, feel, forgiveness and power by using synthetic gut or multifilament nylon string. Some of my favourite nylon tennis strings, in order of price, are Prince Duraflex, Head Velocity MLT and Tecnifibre X1 Bi-Phase.

How do you know if polyester is right for you?

I’d say that if you can’t break your polyester string in 15 hours of play, it's probably time to consider a nylon string.

To answer the title of this video, “what is the best tennis string,” well, there simply isn’t one. Some people definitely have their favourites, but there’s a reason that there are hundreds of options on the market. If there really was a “best” string, there would only be one string for sale today. As with so many other things, tennis strings all come down to personal preference.

Understanding what you like about your tennis string is what TennCom is all about. Feeling those subtle nuances between various tennis products is just fun. It’s like trying new foods, watching new movies or listening to new music. We’ve all got our go-to’s, but there’s a thrill in trying something new.

So before you get all worked up about picking the perfect string for your tennis racquet, just take a risk. No string is really that bad, and no string is really that good. They are all just… a little different.

And if you aren’t exactly sure where to start, I offer string consultations. Here, you’ll answer some detailed questions regarding your playing experience and I will meticulously tailor a personalized string menu for you, based on your tennis.