Excerpts from The Believer: A Microinterview with Roman Prokes

Andre Agassi’s longtime racket stringer on seeking perfection and listening closely.

PART I

THE BELIEVER: What was it like when you first began working as a pro racket stringer? And how did you meet Andre Agassi?

ROMAN PROKES: I was working for Jay Schwartz—it was the two of us—and we basically traveled with the tour. So we would be stringing for players like the Woodies and Wally Masur and, you know, all those. We would be at the Australian Open, say, and we would set up in a hotel room and string privately for players. There were a lot of them. Mainly Swedes and people from the Spanish Armada, all the big names who are now coaches: Albert Costa, Carlos Costa, Àlex Corretja, and, you know, Thomas Enqvist, Thomas Johansson, Jonas Björkman. They were all our clients. Agassi was one of them, one of this crazy number of players, and then eventually, with him, he wanted more one-on-one.

PART II

THE BELIEVER: What do you think has made you particularly successful at racket stringing?

ROMAN PROKES: My wife is Austrian and I’m from Czech. And Agassi, what he wrote in his book—he was very generous—is that my work is “old world.” And it’s true: My wife and I grew up, you know what I mean, in the old world. So that means—forget tennis, forget anything else—when you do something, you have to do it right. It has to be perfect.

And you have to listen, too, you know? It’s not me saying to the player, I know so much, let me tell you. It’s a back-and-forth. A long time ago, in 1982, I was working at a tennis club called Tennis Park—phenomenal club, best ever in New York. There was a gentleman there who worked on Wall Street, super wealthy and successful. And he was in his seventies, so he played a certain way. And he always said, “The racket is too tight.” And I would say, “Yeah, but, you know, I strung it at this tension and that.” And his coach, who back in the ’50s had played Wimbledon and all this stuff, said, “Roman, can I give you one piece of advice? When people like Jack talk, listen first.” And that kind of woke me up. I made a number of tweaks until it became like a pillow. Mushy. He hit one ball and: big smile. “You’re perfect,” he said. I learned how to listen from then on.

PART III

THE BELIEVER: It seems like, in some cases, players have these physical sensations, but they don’t know how to translate what they want into words.

ROMAN PROKES: Players come to you over the years and they say, The racket is too heavy. Well, it’s not. I did all the weighing and it’s measured to the tenth of a gram. But as opposed to—and I think politicians should learn from this—immediately jumping on the other person to say, I know it’s not heavy, because I did the work, I can pay attention to the fact that they are feeling something. They are telling me what they’re feeling, and I need to translate what it is they’re feeling. So they are right and I am right. With tennis players, a lot of people, everywhere you go, they will tell you, Oh, they are crazy. Yeah, right. I’ve never met one crazy tennis player. Well. Maybe one or two. But even that craziness was—it wasn’t crazy. They are looking for something, and people don’t listen. They don’t want to translate that need, or they don’t have enough experience to translate it. And I think my ability comes from listening for all this time and being able to translate.

PART IV

THE BELIEVER: What are some insights you’ve had about stringing over the years?

ROMAN PROKES: One thing is that when people say “heavy,” most of the time it’s a grip-size issue. Because a big grip gets really bulky, so people say “heavy,” right? Also, a lot of times, people say, “The strings are tight.” But tight doesn’t really mean “tight.” It means the racket isn’t creating pocketing. So you might string it tighter with some other string that pockets way more, and they’re gonna say, Oh, now it’s nice and loose, even though it’s actually tighter. And also, a lot of times, visual perception can be at play. When people see added weight, they sometimes come back and say, Oh, this one is too heavy. But if it’s hidden, they’ll say, Oh my god, these are perfect. That happens over and over again.

PART V

THE BELIEVER: What player would you say was the most perceptive when it came to racket feel?

ROMAN PROKES: Petr Korda, Sebastian’s dad. We did his rackets when he won the Australian Open. Petr could detect weight difference within a tenth of a gram. He would close his eyes, pick up the racket, say, “No, no, yes.” He played with a Völkl. He would drive the Völkl guys crazy because he would bring up an issue and they would look into it and say, The guy is nuts, because we did all we have to do as a manufacturer. We flew to China, and we did this, and we did that. So what is it he’s feeling? Is he just some crazy, you know, crazy Czech guy, or is there something to it? He was feeling it. Because when you make the tennis racket, it’s like you’re baking a pretzel, right? Prokes then demonstrates, with his hands, two hypothetical rackets. Suppose racket one is two grams too heavy at the top of the racket: The manufacturer would add two grams at the very bottom of the racket to counterbalance it. Suppose racket two is two grams too heavy at a location just right of the center of the racket: They would add two grams just left of center to counterbalance it. Both rackets would have the same total weight and the same weight balance. Because these adjustments were concealed on the inside of the frame, they would be absolutely indistinguishable to most players. Korda felt those differences, inside the frame. “Oh, this one feels different,” he would say, and he was dead-on. Every single time he picked the right one.

Read the rest of this interview over at The Believer.