Howard Head - Tennis Racquet

Tennis Racquet

After retiring, Head decided to take tennis lessons and for this purpose he got himself a tennis ball machine, which was manufactured by Prince Manufacturing Inc. Although Howard was not very good at tennis, he figured out that the equipment for the game needed a lot of improvement or he was going to need a lot more practice. To begin with he became the majority shareholder and chairman of the board of Prince. While Head considerably improved the design of the ball machine, he still did not get any better at the game. He figured it out that it because of the small sweet-spot of the tennis racquet. In order to make the game of tennis easier, Head came up with the design of oversized racquet. He filed and obtained a patent that covered tennis racquets with size 95–135 square inches. He also pioneered the development of the graphite racquet, which eventually became industry standard, replacing wooden racquets.