Rod Gilmour talks to stringing expert Liam Nolan about Greg Gaultier’s unique tension.

One of the more remarkable stories to emerge from the World Championships in Manchester was the “off the scale” string tension of beaten finalist Gregory Gaultier’s racket.

According to Liam Nolan, one of the UK’s top racket stringers, Gaultier’s tension was set at 15 pounds, nearly half that of his fellow professionals.

“I have been doing top level squash for a long time and 28 pounds has been the ball park figure for around seven years now,” said Nolan, a former stringer to Roger Federer.

“For Greg to go down so low is staggering and off the scale. It means that he generates a lot of power. There will be more of a trampoline effect coming off his racket and it will come off faster.”

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As Daryl Selby found out during his quarter-final defeat to Gaultier in Manchester. “Daryl was having problems straight away,” Nolan revealed. “The ball was going so fast he couldn’t actually see it. He could hear it though!”

Nolan says that the lower the tension, the more power you are going to get. “If you have enough power and want to have ball control you increase the tension. The general rule is that the less time the ball stays on the strings, the more ball control you will have.

“The drawback is that the ball will go deeper onto the strings. Because it takes longer to go into the string bed, you can lose ball control.”

Whenever Nolan has a player who is experimenting with their racket, he likes to be beside the court when they are practising. He says: “We like to listen to the sound of the ball on the string. It tells us a lot. Greg was just creating a lot of power.

“He started his 17-pound tension at the British Open in Hull on a cold court when it’s common to drop your string tensions. For example at Wimbledon, the tennis players will change their rackets if the air temperature goes up or down by a few degrees.”

And if Gaultier had won the world title? “I think people will have logged on to the fact that he had done so with such low tension and come to me,” laughs Nolan.

“But I can guarantee that it won’t work for them, they just don’t have the skills that Greg does.”

Gaultier’s racket specs

Name: Dunlop Biomimetic Elite

Colours: Black/Lime/White

Manufacturer: Dunlop

Strings: Technifibre 305 (1.2 mm)

Weight: Light (135 grams)

Balance: Head-light

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