Your strings snapped two days after a restring. Was it the stringer?

I've strung well over 500 rackets in my time, and I'm grateful that I don't have to do it anymore. Stringing isn't difficult, I would say, but it is very monotonous and time consuming. However, one of the most useful things I ever learned about stringing came from the other side of the counter as a customer, long before I ever touched a stringing machine.

In my early badminton days, I'd take my racket to EZbox in Eastwood for restringing. Word on the street was that they did an excellent job, and of course I needed excellent if I was going to play well, right? They never disappointed. Picking up a freshly strung racket put me in a great mood, itching to get on court and test out the new strings.

Then one time, the strings broke only a day or two after I'd picked it up.

That can't be right, I thought (though I hadn't paid any attention to where it broke, or what I was doing when it happened). All I saw was a broken string, and in my head I had already absolved myself of all blame.

So I marched back to EZbox and told them what had happened. By this point I'd already cut the strings out, so there wasn't much left to show. The staff member heard me out, then asked me one question.

"Did it break in the middle, or near the edge of the frame?"

I had to think about it for a while. I was pretty sure it was the edge, I said. She nodded, agreed, and thanked me for my honesty. At the time, I had no idea what I was being honest about. She told me that if I'd said it snapped in the middle after just a day, she probably wouldn't have believed me.

Then she took the time to explain something I'd never considered: a racket strung perfectly can still break in a single hit.

I couldn't believe it. How?

The mishit

If the shuttle makes contact with the string bed out toward the edge of the frame, that's a mishit. The force lands unevenly across the strings, and that alone can be enough to snap one, just like that.

It makes a lot more sense with a picture.

Look at the centre of the string bed first. The mains (vertical) and crosses (horizontal) weave over and under each other, so when the shuttle lands there, they support each other and the impact is spread across a whole network of strings. Each one gives a little, and together they absorb the hit.

Now look toward the edges, especially the top and bottom of the head. Two things change:

1. There's little or no overlap between mains and crosses. In places, a string is running on its own with nothing crossing it to share the load.

2. The frame is right there. It's hard, it's rigid, and it isn't going to soften or cushion anything.

So imagine the shuttle striking one of the areas circled in blue. What do you think happens to the string then? All that force goes into one or two short strings with nowhere to spread. It doesn't take much for one of them to give.

So how do you tell?

Broke near the frame, especially at the top or bottom of the head? Almost certainly a mishit (you will see two loose ends of string both pointing towards the edge of the frame). That's on the shot, not the stringer, and it can happen on day one just as easily as day one hundred.

Broke in the middle of the string bed within a day or two? That's unusual, and worth having an open discussion with your stringer. Strings do wear through in the middle eventually, but that takes weeks or months of play, not two sessions.

Either way, before you cut the strings out, take a photo. It'll save you trying to remember, like I did, standing at the counter.

Conclusion

Having since strung hundreds of rackets of my own, I appreciate that conversation a lot more now. She could easily have gotten defensive with a customer who walked in half-accusing her colleague of doing a bad job. Instead she asked one good question, believed my answer, and taught me something I've carried with me ever since.

So next time your strings go early, have a look at where they broke before you go looking for someone to blame. Most of the time, the answer is sitting right there at the edge of the frame.