The Racquet Stringer by Chris Merrill starts with a somewhat absurd premise. Brock Armstrong, a high-performance junior player, suddenly remembers he neglected to get his racquets restrung at 11pm the night before an early morning flight to his next tournament. His last-minute search for someone who can do the job overnight introduces him to a mysterious master stringer who transforms his game.
This book is targeted at players roughly 10 to 17 years old, and Merrill uses the story to introduce the mental side of competitive tennis without presenting it as traditional sports psychology. The mysterious stringer does more than prepare Brock’s racquets. Each one is individually wrapped and designated for use in a particular match. The package also contains a short note with a cryptic message that Brock must interpret as he works his way through the tournament.
There are definite supernatural elements to the story. The racquet stringer seems to know considerably more about what Brock will encounter than should reasonably be possible, including which lesson he will need at a particular point in the competition. Readers are going to have to suspend disbelief fairly early and remain willing to do so.
Fortunately, the tennis wisdom does not require the same leap. The messages accompanying Brock’s racquets address legitimate challenges that competitive players encounter when trying to manage themselves during matches. The riddles may resemble tennis fortune cookies at times, but the ideas behind them are sound.
Merrill addresses how players respond to pressure and setbacks while gradually teaching Brock to approach competition with a healthier mindset. An experienced adult player will probably recognize much of the underlying sports psychology. A junior encountering these concepts for the first time may absorb the lessons without realizing they are essentially reading a mental tennis book.
That may be the cleverest aspect of The Racquet Stringer. There is no shortage of tennis books explaining how competitors should think, but most of them are written for adults and read like instruction. Merrill embeds similar ideas inside a tournament story featuring a player much closer in age to his intended audience. Brock has problems to solve, and the reader discovers the lessons along with him.
The individually packaged racquets provide an effective mechanism for delivering that instruction. Brock is not handed everything he needs to know before the tournament begins. Each message arrives when the corresponding problem becomes relevant. He has to interpret the advice and then figure out how to apply it on the court. That approach also avoids overwhelming a young player with too many things to think about at once, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of a book about getting your head right during competition.
There is even a useful lesson embedded in the circumstances that bring Brock to the stringer in the first place. He is scrambling because he failed to take care of his equipment before traveling to the tournament. Mental preparation does not begin when the first ball is struck. Showing up with properly maintained equipment is a considerably less mysterious part of being ready to compete.
I am obviously not the target demographic for The Racquet Stringer. I have read enough tennis psychology over the years to recognize much of the wisdom being packaged for Brock before he figures it out himself. That does not make the advice any less valid. In fact, I frequently found myself thinking that some of the lessons would benefit plenty of adult recreational players as well.
The more relevant question is whether this approach works for younger competitors. I think it does. Merrill has taken useful mental-game concepts and wrapped them inside an entertaining story rather than asking junior players to work their way through a conventional sports psychology book. The supernatural elements require some willingness to play along, but they also give the story its personality and provide the mechanism through which Brock learns.
The Racquet Stringer is ultimately much less about strings and racquets than the title suggests. Rather, it is about learning how to compete when the problems inside a player’s head become more consequential than anything happening with their strokes. The mysterious stringer may possess abilities that require a considerable suspension of disbelief, but the lessons coming out of his shop are surprisingly practical.
For young tennis players who enjoy a little mystery with their competition, that makes for an entertaining story with some useful instruction tucked inside.
THE RACQUET STRINGER: A Prodigy’s Tale (<- Sponsored Link)
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