The Story Behind Babolat’s Wimbledon Stringing Service

By Richard Pagliaro | @TennisNow | Thursday, July 10, 2025
Photo credits: Babolat

The busiest team at Wimbledon doesn’t operate on court—and never needs a ball to make magic happen.

The Championships’ most active team works in a narrow room a short lob from the practice courts at Aorangi Park.

The Babolat string team—a team of about 24 highly-skilled and extremely experienced stringers—are the behind-the-scenes players essential for fine-tuning the racquets you see the pros play with at Wimbledon.

Babolat gave Tennis Now a guided Tour of its stringing operation at Wimbledon last week.

A framed photo of Bjorn Borg hangs on the wall overlooking the stringers who are busy restringing racquets as Babolat’s Racquet Services Manager, Frenchman Eric Ferrazzi, walked us through the process from the moment a player drops off the racquet through the stringing to the moment the completed racquet is handed off to Babolat’s team of runners who dash out the door with the new racquet in hand sprinting to the court to deliver it to the player in need.

“It’s a little quiet now,” Ferrazzi says with a smile. “But on [opening] Monday, it’s buzzing. We restrung 600 racquets on that first Monday.

“We’re here at 8 o’clock in the morning until the last match of the evening whenever that may be.”

Even on the middle Saturday when we visited Babolat Racquet Services the site was jumping. Eric Ferrazzi briefly paused our interview to answer a couple of questions from Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia, who dropped off her Wilson Blade for restringing. Babolat strings all racquets regardless of brand and has every professional racquet stencil—even for brands like Solinco—on the back wall so stringers can add each brand’s unique logo to the string bed upon completion.

Despite the the non-stop activity, both Ferrazzi and his team are the calm in the midst of what may seem chaos. That’s because the process itself is computerized and streamlined.

Players—or their coaches—can come to Racquet Services and drop off their sticks. Receptionists immediately enter all of the information—player name, racquet type, string type and tension—into a computer. That information is printed out and wrapped to each racquet handle. So when the stringer receives the racquet he or she first remove the computer print-out that contains all of the relevant information before starting the string job.

“He knows, from reading the print out, what strings to use, what tension to string and when exactly the racquet is needed,” Ferrazzi tells us. “So on this racquet, for instance, the player wants natural guts on the mains and polyester on the crosses.”

“It takes 15 to 20 minutes to string each racquet. They can do it in less time. What we’re looking for, to be honest, is consistency. So if you are stringing between 15 and 20 minutes, you can meet that consistency all day long.

“We don’t want them to rush it so I don’t want my stringers to do it in less than 15 minutes because the quality control is very important.”

In 1875 Babolat invented the first tennis string—two years after the inaugural Wimbledon was contested.

Babolat became Wimbledon’s official racquet stringing service in 2022.

Stringing for players during matches is truly a team event.

If you watched Emma Raducanu’s Wimbledon matches you may have noticed she sent out racquets within the first few games for restringing. Ferrazzi explains that’s because grass is a living Grand Slam environment where conditions can change based on factors including heat, humidity, whether it’s a day or night match and of course the pace of the opponent.

“Yes Raducanu and also Sabalenka sent racquets back for restringing during their matches,” Ferrazzi said. “They notify the chair umpire they want the racquet restrung and the chair umpire will give the racquet to the ball boy to bring to us while communicating to us the racquets our on their way.

“That gives us the time to create the label for the job while the racquet is coming to us.”

Each year at Wimbledon, nearly 6,000 racquets are strung across three sites (Aorangi, Roehampton, and Raynes Park) by an international team of Babolat stringers, working with precision and coordination for all players across all events—including doubles, mixed doubles and wheelchair tennis—”in strict accordance with each players’ preferences,” Ferrazzi says.

The opening two days of main draw play are Babolat’s busiest.

“Because play starts at 11 a.m. on the outer courts so we have 16 courts in play, plus later Centre Court and No. 1 Court,” Ferrazzi says. “So we will have 32 players asking for racquets to start play. Sometimes it’s eight racquets, sometimes it’s two racquets, but we need to be precise and clear and make sure they’re ready at 11 a.m. for them.”

For pros who mix gut and polyester, Ferrazzi says placement of the gut is paramount.

“If you put [gut] in the mains, you have more pocketing, if you put it in the crosses the string moves more and you have more snap back,” Ferrazzi says. “Personally, I prefer gut in the mains, but it’s purely a personal choice and each player has their own preference.”

Though Babolat stringers can do some customization for its players, the majority of players already have the frame customized and request string jobs though some will also ask for regripping.

Two-time reigning Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz famously added a small piece of lead tape to his Babolat frame this season. Ferrazzi said at the urging of his coach, former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz switched to “more flexible” strings and added that bit of weight “so he wouldn’t damage his arm,” Ferrazzi says.

“The [added] weight can help players because it can reduce the vibration,” Ferrazzi says. “The vibration dampener is for the sound it doesn’t actually diminish the vibration—that’s a misconception. So weight is your friend and gut is your friend when it comes to preserving your arm.”

Over the course of the two-week tournament and the qualifying tournament, Babolat stringers will restring about 6,188 racquets, using 74,256 meters of string and serve more than 724 players, coaches and staff.

As we depart the Babolat Racquet Service we nearly walk right into Andrey Rublev, who is dropping off his sticks personally.

The sound of stringers hard at work echoes in your ears after a very informative tour.