Queens Racquet Stringer Keeps The Pros Playing
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With the U.S. Open underway, the pros racquets are getting hundreds of hours of play combined. NY1 Health & Fitness reporter Kafi Drexel filed the following report on the Queens man responsible for all that string. Fourteen days of play, hundreds of elite players, and Roman Prokes has the calluses to prove it. But they are more like a second skin to him now.
For the past five years, Prokes, who has been the stringing business for more than 25 years, has been stringing racquets for the U.S. Open and almost every other major grand slam.
"I started in tennis as a kid and played as a kid," Prokes says. "Obviously, I was not very successful. So I started stringing tennis racquets for myself and a few other people."
Luckily for private clients like Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova, that skill turned into a passion and the Czech-born master stringer travels the world customizing racquets.
"The racquets, as you see the [in the store], is what the professional players really play with," says Prokes. "The difference is we come always back to that customizing. For example, Roddick plays with a Babolat racquet, but the big difference [between his and the store model] is we actually remove the handle and mold it to his specific needs."
Outside of tournament time, New Yorkers can often find Prokes, who owns customization service company RPNY Tennis, his wife Angelika, or another member of his team, working out of his pro shop in CityView Racquet Club in Queens.
Working with Wilson, the official stringer of the U.S. Open, Prokes and a team of 20 will string up about 3,500 racquets before the tournament's end. They get it all done with ergonomically-correct Wilson machines, running $6,000 a piece.
"It is the first stringing machine which actually adjusts to the stringer," Prokes explains. "It goes up and down. It angles itself, which makes a big difference for the user. When we spend about 100 hours a week stringing tennis racquets, you don't want to be bending over the machine."
Prokes' job isn't just about stringing. It's also about coming out to the courts, evaluating players, and seeing how their racquets play on the surfaces. That way, he says, he can get a real feel for matching players up with the perfect racquet.
One thing Prokes likes to make clear: his services aren't just for the pros.
"A lot of times when we talk about the pros and people look at it and think it is very interesting, but it is a different world. It does not affect my game," he says. "We do this for everybody.
This comes from a guy who insists he's not just stringing you along.