Looking after your tennis equipment is of great importance to your game, it can prolong the life of expensive sporting kit and provide the proper support you need.
Good tennis clubs such as Tennis World Lane Cove offer services to their members to help them keep their kit in top working order, including re-stringing and re-gripping rackets.
Of course re-gripping your racket is a fairly easy exercise if you follow the processes below.
Re-gripping a Racket
- Put the small piece of finishing tape to one side and remove the transparent film from the outer-side of the overgrip.
- Expose the adhesive starting spot at the tapered end of the grip and apply it to the racket handle so that the grip is flush against the butt of the racket.
- Slowly wind the grip around the handle, keeping the tension firm without overstretching the grip. If you are right handed wind the grip clockwise, if you are left handed wrap it anti-clockwise. This will give you a more comfortable grip.
- Overlap the edges of the grip by a consistent width – between and quarter and half a centimetre – depending on how much you want to build the thickness up.
- As you get close to the end of the grip, stretch the grip a little tighter to smooth out unevenness.
- Wind the grip beyond the end of the undergrip up the throat of the racket, continuing to maintain the same amount of overlap.
- Feeling the grip, locate the edge of the undergrip and use a pen to draw a line around the overgrip at that point.
- Unwind the grip from the throat of the racket and use scissors to cut along the line that you have marked, giving the end of your grip a nice tapered edge.
- Rewind the grip to the end of the undergrip so that you have an even finish and secure it with finishing tape, stretching the tape taut in the same direction as the grip has been wound.
- For a secure finish, cut the end of the finishing tape at an angle and stick it down.
There are two types of grips for a racket, a replacement grip and an overgrip.
Replacement Grips
As mentioned above, replacement grips require that you remove all types of grips on the handle. Otherwise the new grip will be too bulky about twice the size you require. Sometimes at the bottom it can be stapled on which can bring difficulties.
You generally don’t have to worry about replacing the staples but if you want to it is perfectly fine to do so. Also, be sure to remove the sticky tape with the outside of the grip, otherwise it will be very annoying to remove when you have nothing but sticky tape on your handle.
Overgrips
Overgrips just require that you remove any previous overgrips. Removing overgrips is much easier than removing replacement grips since they don’t have the sticky tape, just some glue that keeps it attached to the butt of the racket, so all you do is remove that sticker and pull off the overgrip.
If you feel that all this is too much trouble then your local tennis club will be happy to provide a re-gripping service for you, that way it will be a professional job.
