Word: racquetment
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Initially under siege from the reactionary tennis establishment, critics accused the fledgling racquet, which boasts a 40-per-cent greater hitting area than its traditional counter-part, of being illegal, Political humorist, Art Buchwald, an avid tennis fan, recalls his personal "humiliation" and "suffering" when he first brandished it against Washington politicos. "I went through a terrible period... my opponents were screaming bloody murder, accusing me of cheating." While most of Washington officialdom are now converts, rumor has it that president Reagan doesn't play the game because he hasn't figured out where to hitch his horse...
...page rule book that specifies everything from the width of the lines on the court to the length of the fuzz of the ball places no restriction on the size f dimensions of the racquet. The United States Tennis Association rule number four states only that the racquet is the implement used to strike the ball...
...Prince, the prototypical and most popular oversized racket, simply grew out of its creator's desire to better his own game. Millionare inventor Howard Head '36. who revolutionized the skiing industry by introducing the aluminum ski in the '50s, began tinkering with the idea of a bigger racquet in the early '70s. Head, a typical hacker, became frustrated with his frequent off-center hits which would cause racket and wrist to turn, spraying the ball awry. Reasoning that the laws of physics dictate that the wider something is, the more resistant it is to twisting. Head figured bigger might...
...Prince's superiority over standard racquets rests in the fact that the best place to hit the ball is located in the racquet head's three-inch area of added size, an area which does not even exist on traditional racquets. About two-thirds from the grip, this critical spot would fall embarrassingly on the throat of the standard racquet, So, up to a point, the larger hitting surface improves players' game by 35 per cent, according to customer surveys...
...invention marks the first radical change in the design of the tennis racquet in more than a century, Surely in the past tennis has seen its oddities. Witness Richard Sears, the first U.S. champion in 1881, who used a rectangular racquet. The tennis world has not been immune to other experimentation... a racquet shaped lia a pitchfork, diagonal stringing, crooked handles, and the infamous spaghetti racquet, a springly double-string device which, until its banishment, put a remarkable array of spins on the ball so looking back, it is no small miracle that today oversized racquets have succeeded...