What Was Actually Different About the String
Luxilon had introduced the first widely used polyester tennis string, marketed as Big Banger, in 1991, six years before Kuerten's title. The company had been making synthetic thread since the late 1950s and only moved into tennis strings in the mid-1980s, expanding out of an unrelated textile business. What made the polyester formulation matter on court was tension. Players could string a polyester bed ten to fifteen pounds looser than they typically used with natural gut or nylon synthetic and still keep the ball inside the lines, because a looser polyester bed deflects more on contact without sending the shot long. That let players swing faster through the ball, and faster racket-head speed at contact translates directly into more topspin, which pulls a hard-hit shot back down into the court instead of sailing past the baseline.
