Dubai: Russian star Maria Sharapova had an astounding 30 racquets strung during her maiden stay in Dubai last week.
Sharapova, who lost in the final to Justine Henin-Hardenne was among the more persistent user of the racquet stringing facility set up on the squash court of the Aviation Club.
The stringing service consisting of three state-of-the-art Babolat Sensor machines is run by six certified tennis coaches from the Clark Francis Tennis Academy.
"Sharapova's 30 racquets is the highest number we've done from one player during the past four years," Adeed Maliakkal, one of the stringers, told Gulf News.
The week-long Sony Ericsson WTA Tour saw the six coaches Jay Kumar, Austin Varghese, Krishna Kumar, Vijay Das and Sivan Govind along with Maliakkal - stringing as many as 150 racquets, of which 30 belonged to Sharapova alone.
"So far we have done 220 men's racquets, and by the time we finish the tournament, this number will be much higher," Maliakkal said.
However, this number is a far cry of the 470 racquets that got strung during the 2003 Dubai Tennis Championships.
"We used to have an average of 65-70 racquets for stringing daily. We even slept here to ensure the players got their racquets in time," Maliakkal disclosed.
Racquet stringing is an art for sure, with the men being quite particular about the string tension on their racquets.
"Someone like Sharapova prefers a high tension of 60 pounds on the strings, which is as good as the racquets used by most male players," Maliakkal added.
"If they ask for 21 kgs and we put the tension at 19 kgs, the men notice the difference at once," he observed.
"It is normal among players to alter racquet tension as per their requirements and the conditions.
"For instance, last week the women altered the racquet tension after the rains struck Dubai," he stated.
Stringing one racquet requires an average of 15 to 18 minutes.
"But the time factor is not important here. It has to be a perfect job as per the requirement of the player," Maliakkal said.
