Oct
18
In Print
ByI have a story in today’s New York Times Thursday Style section about tennis racket customization. Look out for the sidebar too.
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12 Comments
October 18th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
You’re into Tennis now? What happened to the birdwatching?
October 18th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Cool! I especially like that you wrote an article about Federer, my favorite tennis player.
I didn’t quite understand the paragraph, “… a full arsenal of customized Federer rackets would cost about $3,500, including the cost of the rackets.”
What do you mean by the customized rackets cost $3,500 including the cost of the rackets? Do you mean including the original cost of the store-bought rackets, pre-customization?
October 18th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
That’s right, William.
It’s a quirk of tennis that the rackets the pros use are actually a little bit cheaper than beginner “game improvement” rackets.
You can buy Federer’s racket, the Wilson K Factor Six-One Tour, for about $190 in a store. Then it would cost you a further $100 or so for the customization.
The $3,500 figure is the total ($290) multiplied by 12 and rounded up.
October 18th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Cretin, can’t a man have more than one passion?
October 18th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Funny, I imagined these custom rackets for pros would cost a heck of a lot more than mere civilian rackets.
October 18th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
It does. The $3,500 figure is for a mere mortal like you or I to have our racket customized to as near to Federer’s specs as possible.
But if you’re Roger Federer, and you want someone to follow you to all the tournaments to customize and string your rackets, you’re looking at a lot more than $3,500.
Federer’s customizer and stringer, Nate Ferguson, told me that his company’s Gold Service “generally costs less than $50,000 per man, and it varies depending on the specific requirements of the player.”
Ferguson’s current clients are: Federer, Djokovic, F. Gonzalez, A. Murray, M. Baghdatis, G. Canas, L. Hewitt, M. Fish, and M. Safin.
His first Gold service client, in 2001, was Tim Henman, who he strung for until his retirement last month.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
No.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:58 am
This sort of stuff goes down real smooth with in-flight magazines… have you approached any?
October 20th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Nope, but it’s a good idea. Do you have any particular airline magazines in mind?
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm
How anyone could think Federer, a boorish eurosnob who makes tennis tired, is exciting is beyong me.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:56 am
But The USD 50k covers, I assume, the cost of some fellow attending every match in the tour series and being on hand constantly to tweek the strings when necessary. Right?
So if the guy has to pay for his hotels, flights, beer and lapdances all from this USD 50K then actually it’s hardly anything…
October 24th, 2007 at 7:46 am
I didn’t ask about expenses.