SOLINCO is relatively new to the tennis market. Never heard of them? Neither had I. They clearly have a market however. According to the company, over 1/3 of top tennis colleges in the US are using their string.
Four of the last 6 NCAA championship winning teams use SOLINCO: UCLA, Baylor and Pepperdine are among them. Virginia Tech is another example of a team that has left brands individual players grew up with for newer-to-market Solinco (launched early '09).
If you see an open circle stenciled on a player's strings, that's the SOLINCO mark. Click on the picture right to see the mark on Sebastian Rivera's racquet.
The company's co-polyester strings have a reputation for providing excellent bite, control, pop, comfort, power and tension maintenance because of the company's proprietary composite formula and way they build it. Read more HERE. RSI did a full review on their popular Heaven Strings series Tour Bite, $11.50 per package.
Barb Wire is their newest string (also $11.50). It's twisted, not round, and has sharp edges like the Tour Bite; it's black in color. For spin oriented players, it's serious top making.
SOLINCO racquets were just launched publicly in August. They don't have a big presence yet but are expected to grow as sponsored junior players pick them up and spread the word. "The fact that we are getting a lot of traction with a relatively limited marketing budget says a lot about the quality of our products," says KT Kim, Director of SOLINCO. "We focus and spend our resources on R & D and providing our customers with the highest quality and performance products on the market, and it's working."
There are currently four racquet models in the SOLINCO Pro Series, all midplus in size but differing in weight. The Pro7 is the lightest at 10.1 oz. unstrung, Pro8 is 10.6 oz. The Pro10 and 10x weigh in at 11.5 oz. The sticks run $180.00 unstrung.
These racquets are built around a nickel-mesh material that extends over 32 cms of the frame and is said to enhance the strength, as well as the stability at impact of the racquet by neutralizing the torque and side-to-side twisting of the frame, allowing for a unique solid and crisp feel, with improved control and power. Tennis-Warehouse has a review up that will give you more detail.
If you are a competitive player, NTRP 4.5 and up, you might want to give these new racquets a test drive.
More info at SOLINCO. Demo or buy at Tennis-Warehouse.
