He’s fine-tuned equipment for McEnroe, Lendl and Navratilova, while being credited for helping Djokovic’s career resurgence. Meet Roman Prokes: racquet stringer for the stars
On Super Bowl Sunday afternoon in 2022, while the vast majority of Gotham’s residents were huddled in their homes awaiting the start of the big game, I was making the short drive from Manhattan to a tennis club across the East River in Queens. The reason: Roman Prokes, racquet stringer and all-around equipment guru to the pros, was giving my son a custom “racquet consultation”. In other words, my son was getting the same advice and attention to his equipment that Prokes has given countless professionals.
Prokes carefully examined my son’s racquet – getting an exact weight of the stick (“even though racquets have a listed weight, the same exact racquet will often vary by several grams”, he told me at the time). He then arranged a hitting session with a club professional for an hour and had my son try out 10 different racquets with various string configurations before deciding on which he thought was best suited to his game. My son walked away with a new racquet and the results – whether coincidental or not – were impressive: he went on to win his next two tournaments.
My racquet stringer is old school, a Czech artiste named Roman. He’s the best and he needs to be: a string job can be a difference in a match, and a match can be the difference in a career, and a career can mean the difference in countless lives. When I pull a fresh racquet from my bag and try to serve out a match, the string tension can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because I’m playing for my family, my charitable foundation, my school, every string is like a wire in an airplane engine … So vital is Roman to my game that I take him on the road. He’s officially a resident of New York but when I’m playing in Wimbledon he lives in London, and when I’m playing in the French Open he’s Parisian. I’ll sit with Roman and watch him string a few racquets: I’m calmed, grounded, inspired by watching a craftsman. It reminds me of the singular importance in this world of a job well done.
Continue reading...