Where do I begin with this new Signum Pro Tornado “twisted” polyester tennis string? I guess I’ll start with my impression right out the box. It felt pretty soft and I could see the “twist” of this string (I could also feel the twist). Examining the string closely, it looked like the twists were pretty compact.
Signum Pro Tornado 16 tennis string review
Stringing the Signum Pro Tornado was nothing special, weaving the crosses was pretty easy and tying off the knots was rather easy. The only problem I had with stringing was the coiling; the Signum Pro Tornado kept it’s coil throughout the entire process, it was annoying that’s all. I was eager to go out and hit with this strung up in my racquet.
The string description on the packaging says:
“Signum Pro Tornado will wreak havoc on your opponent with its exceptional spin potential. It offers a heptagonal shape that’s axially twisted to provide maximum bite on the ball, helping produce more spin. This helps keep the ball inside the baseline while offering excellent longevity with the optimized molecular structure. Good ball pocketing and pop combine for controlled power.“
I’m sure you can imagine that I was very much looking forward to gripping and ripping the tennis ball to get that extra spin and kick off my groundstrokes with the Signum Pro Tornado. Well that was my intention anyway.
I gotta say, after two days and nearly 5 hours of solid hitting, I was not impressed with the string. I really wanted to like this string and I really wanted to see how the ball would react to the texture of the twist. It just was not there.
On day one, the Signum Pro Tornado felt really stiff. I kept pushing on the stringbed with my hands, in an attempt to loosen the strings up a little bit. I didn’t really get much response from the strings. Yeah, I was able to get some acceptable pop and pace, but I didn’t get the ball pocketing I was looking forward to. Nor was I experiencing any extraordinary spin off the forehand or backhand (even when I hit my forehand with and extreme-western grip) with these strings.
Day two was a little better, but nothing exceptional. The Tornado began moving around after the first few minutes of full speed hitting. I figured I might get the spin that I was promised now that the Signum Pro Tornado string loosened up even more than the first time hitting. Again, I wasn’t really impressed. My playtest was more confusing to me, as the night wore on, I didn’t get much more of anything. I did notice that I began lose power on my groundstrokes; the Signum Pro Tornado started to lack immense power between day one and two, so I had to put a little extra work into generating enough pace to feel like I got some good shots in.
Overall, I personally didn’t like the Signum Pro Tornado 16. Yes, it’s twisted; however, it doesn’t make much of a difference in spin production or penetration, even with good stroke technique. I can only assume that Signum Pro designed this poly string to compete with the popularity of Babolat RPM, but they really missed the mark, by a lot. There are other Signum Pro tennis strings I plan to playtest, I just started with the wrong one. I will be cutting this out of my tennis racquet as soon as possible and string it up with something else.
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