Why It Spread Faster Than Any Racket Change
Racket technology in the same period, larger head sizes, lighter graphite composites, stiffer frames, gets far more attention in tennis history, but a string change is cheaper, faster, and more universal to adopt than a new frame. A player can restring a racket they already love in an afternoon; switching frame technology means relearning timing and feel from scratch. That is a large part of why polyester spread through the professional tour within a handful of years while other equipment shifts took much longer to become standard. By the early 2000s, heavy topspin, western-grip forehands hit with tremendous margin over the net had become the default template for tour-level tennis, a stylistic shift that tracks closely with the string's adoption curve rather than any single racket launch.
