Word: racketeer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Luxilon shot can be traced back to 1997, when Gustavo Kuerten, a gangly, low-ranked Brazilian player, decided to string his racket with a co-polymer monofilament designed by Luxilon Industries, a small Belgian company specializing in medical sutures and bra straps (it still makes both). Kuerten confounded opponents with his aggressive, dipping shots, winning three French Open Championships and reaching number one. He credited Luxilon for a crucial role in his unlikely ascent. (See pictures of Wimbledon...
...Inch that Changed Tennis Forever," Rod Cross, a physics professor at the University of Sydney, argued that the innovation in equipment that transformed topspin from a looping, defensive shot into a dive-bombing, offensive play actually happened in the late 1970s, when equipment makers widened the heads of professional rackets from nine inches to 10 (they also dropped wood for metal and eventually graphite). The extra inch allowed players to tilt the racket forward and swing from low to high without worrying about clipping the edge of the frame when brushing up on the ball...
According to Cross, nothing much has changed since that innovation; it's only in the last 10 years that players have developed the physique and technique to take advantage of the extra width by whipping the racket up in a motion that generates about five times more spin than the ground strokes players were hitting in the 1970s. "Players were given an inch in the 1970s and they took a mile," he says...
Pinpointing the role equipment has played in tennis's evolution can be tricky, however. Conventional wisdom once held that more powerful racket frames led to the hard-serving power game of the late '90s. But a 1997 test by Tennis Magazine found that 6 ft. 5 in. (1.96 m) Australian Mark Philippoussis served at an average speed of 124 m.p.h. (200 km/h) with his own graphite racket, and an only slightly slower 122 m.p.h. (196 km/h) with a classic wooden racket...
...could have pumped me from that horrible way I felt but this was one of them. So I stepped from the aisle, tried to sit in that sliver, and then whacked the man with my hips until he and all his friends from Crotchety Incorporated moved it down. The racket had lost some of its heat by the time Ezekiel sat. I was busy looking for the best place to vomit, to vomit for no other reason than to get rid of something I felt but didn’t really know—impatience? Was that impatience sloshing around...