I decided to give the new Dunlop Black Widow polyester tennis string (in a 17 gauge) a play test, I mainly wanted to try it out for the obvious reason that almost every string manufacturer is trying to come up with their version of Babolat’s RPM Blast string.

My first impression of the Black Widow was a little feeling of skepticism, mainly due to how thin and flimsy the string felt in my hand. It seriously felt like it was a thin wire that was not made for tennis.

Stringing the Black Widow was not at bad as I had thought, I did a one piece string job, I was able to string this set quickly and easily. Knotting the ends off was extremely quick and the knots tied nice and tight. After I finished stringing the Black Widow, I did a quick inspection of the string bed, everything looked pretty good, however; the last two crosses seemed to have twisted severely so it looked a little tattered.

I got together with a friend about two hours after I had finished stringing the Black Widow string, and we started warming up. I immediately noticed the extreme comfort the Black Widow provided me. It felt really buttery and very soft – I was concerned that it would be too soft when taking full swings. When I was properly warmed up and started taking bigger cuts at the ball, I noticed that buttery feeling was still there, however; the power was not there. I could not hit a powerful ball for the life of me, it was as if the strings were absorbing the power to minimize the vibration.

With the obvious competition the Black Widow has with the other textured “spin-enhancing” black tennis strings, I wanted to touch on the type of spin this string produced for me. It didn’t feel like I was getting the maximum time on the stringbed that I desired to get the spin going, however; my hitting partner did mention that he felt the ball accelerating after making contact with the ground. This acceleration messed up his timing which cause more errors than he was happy with. He did also mention that on flatter shots the ball skidded off the court and stayed lowed; so those two spin factors give this string some life. When hitting slice backhands, the ball float quite a bit longer, perhaps it was the spin, the elements, or just me getting under the ball a little more.

I struggled quite a bit with this string on my groundstrokes, however; the Dunlop Black Widow is really bad-ass when hitting serves. I was serving HUGE flat serves with extremely sharp angles. My kick serves we also very impressive, kicking up high and out. The Black Widow provided me the power I needed to hit big serves but lacked on the ground where I wanted it most. Like I said above, the buttery feeling took the power away, which was evident at the baseline. The touch with these string were pretty decent, I was able to get some nice action on my volleys and could put enough spin to hit a stopping drop volley.

Overall, Dunlop made a valiant effort to compete with the rest of the “Black Poly Tennis Strings” on the market, but the Black Widow failed to bring the power that most tennis players want these days. It’s a fairly priced tennis string, coming in at just under $13. This string would be perfect for the tennis player who doesn’t want a lot of power but wants to remain competitive on the tennis court. Oh and I broke a main after about 2 hours of play – perhaps next time I’ll test a 16 gauge string.

Try out a Dunlop Black Widow set only at Tennis-Warehouse.com!