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 Apollo Leisure ran the racket stringing
service at the Championships for the 4th successive
year and again broke all records for the number of
rackets strung. The Apollo stringing service
commenced on Saturday 16th June at the qualifying
event. This was held, as usual, at the Bank of
England Sports Club in Roehampton. There the
men’s singles is a draw of 128, the
ladies’ singles a draw of 96 and both the
men’s and ladies doubles have a draw of 16
pairs. With play commencing on the Monday we took in
160 rackets on the Sunday and exceeded that with 167
rackets dropped off on the Monday. Six Prince 6000
stringing machines worked steadily over the 6 days at
Roehampton. The front
desk was using the Stringer programme (www.JVCStringer.com)
together with scanners that would bring up the
players details once scanned. Whilst operating this
service we were also stringing at Aorangi Park from the Monday
before the Championships to cater for players
arriving early for practice. Although play was
interrupted by the wet weather, the qualifying was
completed as scheduled on Thursday evening which
enabled us to move our equipment over to SW19 on the
Friday for the main event.
 Back row -
left to right - Jamie Pethick, Paul Skipp, Petr
Krejci, Petros
Biris
Middle row - Roger Henry, Hannah Bryer, Ellie Pocock, Richard Parnell, Duncan
Callan, Francis Davies,
Vaclav Smat, Matt Smith,
Andy Smith, Andy Phillips, Linda Edmonton, Roger
Dalton, Jim Warner, Mark Maslowski
Front row – Ray Gooden, Misel
Milanovic, Karen Goodman
With everything moved into our base besides the
practice courts at Aorangi Park we were nearly up
to full capacity with 12 Prince 6000 machines, 8
stringers, 4 admin staff and 2 runners for the Friday
and Saturday. With space at a premium we also had a
Prince PTC situated in the kitchen to deal with all
our customisation requests. We also had to
accommodate various film crews, radio interviews and
museum tours! For Sunday we were fully prepared for a
busy day and took in 326 rackets which was 34 up on
2011. Pizzas were ordered in (each box opened and
checked by G4S security) to keep us going into the
evening as we prepared for an early start on Monday
and the busiest day of the tournament. As predicted
the rackets flooded in for most of the day and by the
time it was dark we had checked in 372 rackets and it
was time for a well-deserved meal of fish &
chips. Fortunately we were out of Aorangi before midnight but
there were some early starts, 4.45am, for some
stringers in order to deal with the morning’s
rackets that had to be strung that day.
As the draw is reduced our stringer numbers
decline from 12 stringers on the Sunday, Monday and
Tuesday down to 4 by the finals weekend. Although the
top 4 male players have their rackets strung by their
own personal stringers we did string a couple for
Novak Djokovic and 3
‘on courts’ for Andy Murray when he
played Baghdatis under
the roof on the middle Saturday. We did string for
the ladies winner, mens
doubles winners, ladies doubles winners, mixed
doubles winners and the boys and girls winners. As we
entered the 2nd week we were up on numbers
by around 300 but this did slow down slightly as the
rain reduced the practice opportunities. By close of
play the team had checked in and strung 2928 rackets,
an 8.24% increase on 2011. We look forward to next
year and breaking the 3000 mark!
Highest tension was Alexander Peya 32/32kg in Isospeed Professional.
Lowest tension Filippo
Volandri 12/12kg in Luxilon Original.
See below a log of selected players frames, strings
and tensions from 2012:
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