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Apollo Leisure was honoured to be asked by the All
England Club to run the stringing service at the 2011
Championships, our third year.
In partnership with Prince, Apollo used 12 new Prince
6000 electronic stringing machines. A Prince
Precision Tuning Centre was used for checking and
customising players’ frames and the ERT 300 to
determine the dynamic tensions. These are all
products available from Apollo Leisure.
The service started off at the Qualifying Event at
the Bank of England Sports Ground on Saturday
11th June. Six machines were in place to
deal with a draw of 128 men, 96 ladies, mens and
ladies doubles and mixed. Rain on the main practice
day on Sunday slowed it down considerably which
resulted in the Monday being the busiest day with 159
rackets coming through the door. Qualifying was
scheduled to end on Thursday but due to the poor
weather was not completed until the Saturday evening.
Although the Championships began on Monday
20th June, players were arriving at the
All England from the previous Monday so they could
get accustomed to the grass. This meant having 6
machines at both venues until it was time to move
everything over for the main event.
MOST OF THE TEAM IN FRONT OF THE PRACTICE COURTS AT
AORANGI PARK, WIMBLEDON
Our team of professional stringers headed by Roger
Dalton included Vaclav Smat, Richard Parnell, Petr
Kerjci, Paul Skipp, Jamie Pethick, Misel Milovanovic,
Duncan Callan, Petros Biris, Mark Maslowski, Paul
Brock, Jim Warner, Mark Goodman, Karen Goodman, David
Munt, Rudi Sutoto and Dip Patel. Many people
commented that this was the best team of stringers
seen at Wimbledon. Sadly Ray Gooden missed the event
with a virus but looks forward to being there in
2012.
 The front desk was headed up by Andy
Phillips and included Linda Edmontson, Roger Henry,
Hannah Bryer, and Frances Davies backed up with
invaluable support from the runners – Matthew
Smith, Andrew Smith, Simon Weatherup and Samn
Clatworthy.
Again records were broken with 377 rackets coming in
on the 1st Monday, this smashed the
previous years record of 316. At one point it was if
we were drowning under a wave of Pure Drives, Blades
and Radicals. By close of play the team had strung
2705 frames, an increase of just over 6.5% from 2010.
Yet again a huge commitment was shown by the
stringers with late nights and 5am starts labouring
in cramped working conditions. Many challenges were
overcome during the 3 weeks and although there were
tense moments the service was excellent and the
players appreciated this. Every player would receive
their rackets on time, stencilled, bagged and strung
to their exact requirements.
At the lower end of tensions there were 12 players
requesting 18kg or less. The lowest tension being
James Cerretani of the USA at 13kg strung in Pacific
Polyforce. At the other end of the scale was the
German based Jamaican Dustin Brown who preferred the
tighter feel of 32kg in Signum Pro’s Poly
Plasma.
See below a log of selected players frames, strings
and tensions:
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