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By TRU PRO | Updated March 2026 | 6 min read
The racquet gets most of the credit. Players spend weeks testing frames, reading flex ratings, comparing swing weights, and then string their new purchase with whatever the pro shop has on the machine that day. But the string is where the ball actually goes. It determines how the ball leaves the racquet, how long tension lasts, how much spin is possible, and whether your arm holds up over a long season.
The history of tennis strings is really the history of how the modern game became what it is. Each major shift in string technology changed tactics, changed technique, and changed who could afford to play in the first place. Understanding that history gives you a better framework for the decisions you're making about your own setup today.
Tennis in its earliest form wasn't played with a racquet at all. The ancestor of the modern game traces back to a French pastime from the 12th century called Jeu de Paume — game of the palm — where players struck balls with their bare hands, and later with leather gloves. The game spread through French monasteries and eventually into the courts of European royalty, remaining a sport of the privileged for several hundred years.
The first racquet resembling what we'd recognize today appeared in Italy in the late 16th century. These wooden frames were individually crafted and strung with gut, the same material already used for musical instruments like lutes and violins. The parallel wasn't a coincidence. Gut had properties that makers already understood: elasticity, tension retention, and a responsiveness that synthetic materials wouldn't come close to replicating for another three and a half centuries.
Lawn tennis as a codified sport arrived in 1874 when British Army officer Major Walter Clopton Wingfield formally patented a version of the game with standardized rules and court dimensions. The sport spread quickly, and with it came immediate demand for better equipment.
A year later, in 1875, a French craftsman named Pierre Babolat applied his expertise in instrument strings to the problem of stringing tennis racquets. Working in Lyon, France, he produced what is widely recognized as the first purpose-made tennis string from sheep intestine. The material was processed carefully — cleaned, stretched, dried, and treated to create something with exceptional feel, power, and the ability to hold tension under repeated impact.
The process was labor-intensive and expensive, which meant natural gut remained the exclusive territory of players who could afford it. But the string's performance was unmatched, and that would remain true for a very long time.
By the 1920s, Babolat had refined the product further. Pierre's son Albert launched the VS string — a designation that would become the most recognized name in natural gut history. The four legendary French players of that era, collectively known as the Four Musketeers, helped develop and popularize it. René Lacoste and Suzanne Lenglen were among the first champions to win the French Open using the VS.
One persistent myth worth clearing up: natural gut has never been made from cat intestine, despite the term "catgut" appearing in historical references. The name came from a medieval Welsh instrument whose sound reminded listeners of a cat — the strings themselves were always made from animal intestine, and Babolat's version was initially sheep gut before transitioning to cow gut in the 1960s. Today, it takes material from two cows to produce a single set of strings.
Natural gut's dominance lasted for the better part of a century, but it had one significant problem: cost. The production process was slow, the raw material was limited, and the resulting string was fragile enough that recreational players went through sets quickly. Tennis remained, largely, a sport for those who could afford to maintain the equipment.
The 1950s changed that. Advances in synthetic fiber manufacturing — driven largely by the broader textile industry — made it possible to produce nylon strings at a fraction of the cost of gut. These early synthetic strings were simpler in construction, typically a single solid filament of nylon, and they couldn't match the feel or tension stability of natural gut. But they were cheap, durable, and accessible.
The effect on the sport's growth was significant. As synthetic strings brought the cost of a usable racquet setup down, tennis opened up to a much wider population. The participation boom of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s — the era that produced mass market tennis culture in the United States and Europe — was built in part on equipment that ordinary players could actually afford to maintain.
Manufacturers continued developing synthetic options through this period. Multifilament strings, constructed from bundles of fine fibers bonded together, offered a closer approximation of gut's feel and power than solid nylon could. They became a popular middle ground for players who wanted more comfort than a firm poly but couldn't justify the cost of natural gut.
String history has one particularly strange chapter worth mentioning. In 1977, a double-strung configuration known informally as the spaghetti racquet appeared on the professional tour. The system used a looser, multi-layered string pattern with additional cross pieces woven through, creating a surface that could generate extreme topspin and unpredictable ball behavior that conventional strings simply couldn't produce.
The ITF banned it within a year. But the episode highlighted something the sport was beginning to grapple with: string configuration could fundamentally alter how tennis was played, not just how it felt. That question would return in a much bigger way two decades later.
The most consequential moment in the history of tennis strings happened at the 1997 French Open. Gustavo Kuerten, a 20-year-old Brazilian ranked 66th in the world, won the tournament in what remains one of the biggest upsets in Grand Slam history. He beat three former French Open champions along the way. And he did it with a string that almost nobody else on tour was using: a polyester monofilament from Belgian manufacturer Luxilon, known as the Big Banger.
Polyester strings had existed before Kuerten, but they were considered too stiff and uncomfortable for serious use. What Luxilon had developed was a string that players could string at lower tensions — typically 10 to 15 pounds below what they'd used with natural gut or synthetic — and still get exceptional control. At lower tension the stringbed deflects more on impact, which means the player can swing faster without the ball flying long. More swing speed means more topspin. More topspin means the ball dips back into the court despite the additional pace.
The math compounded quickly. Players who adopted polyester could hit harder and spin more than those who didn't. The tactical center of gravity on the baseline shifted. Longer rallies, higher bounce, heavier ball — the modern game's defining characteristics all trace back in some meaningful way to that Luxilon string in Kuerten's racquet at Roland Garros.
Within a decade, polyester strings had become the dominant choice across professional tennis and had worked their way down into competitive club and college play. The way racquets were strung changed too — tensions dropped across the board, and hybrid setups combining a polyester main with a softer cross became standard for players who wanted the control of poly with some relief on the arm.
The first generation of polyester strings were round in cross-section and relatively uniform in construction. As manufacturers refined their understanding of how string geometry affects spin and feel, they began experimenting with shapes. Square profiles, hexagonal profiles, pentagonal profiles — each edge configuration changes how the string bites the ball on contact and how quickly it snaps back into position after impact.
Shaped co-polys now dominate the competitive string market. The category has expanded to cover a wide range of playing characteristics: from very firm, low-powered control strings for aggressive baseliners to softer, more elastic formulations designed to be arm-friendly without sacrificing the spin access that modern players expect.
TRU PRO's Pure Rush is a six-sided co-poly built around that balance — a shaped profile that generates strong spin and bite, combined with a formulation that stays arm-friendly across extended play. It's a product of the same evolution that started with Kuerten and Luxilon in 1997, refined over 25 years of understanding what competitive players actually need from a string at this level.
Hybrid setups have also become more sophisticated. Players pairing a firm co-poly main with a softer round cross are effectively combining different eras of string technology in the same racquet. TRU PRO's Ghost Wire is designed specifically for this role — a smooth, round co-poly that complements a shaped main by increasing dwell time and softening the response without undermining spin or control.
The through-line across 150 years of string development is that materials set the ceiling on what's possible in a tennis game. Natural gut defined what feel and tension stability could be. Synthetic strings made the sport accessible to the general public. Polyester unlocked spin rates and control levels that reshaped competitive tactics from the baseline up.
The players who paid attention to their strings at each transition — who understood what the new materials made possible and adjusted their game accordingly — gained a real advantage over those who didn't. That's still true now. The gap between a well-chosen string setup and a generic one isn't cosmetic. It shows up in matches.
For a deeper look at how to navigate the current string landscape, the TRU PRO String Selection Guide covers the practical decisions — string type, gauge, tension, and hybrid configurations — for players at every level.
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