The History of Babolat, the World's Oldest Tennis Brand: Babolat Brandography by Tennis Warehouse

When you think about the history of tennis you must consider the brand Babolat. They've been involved since the game's inception, and what a fitting place for them to be located here in the beautifully historic city of Lyon.

Lucien, tell me a little bit about yourself and how long you've been working with Babolat.

37 years. September '81.

And yesterday you were taking me around the natural gut factory, can you give me a little bit of the history on natural gut?

We moved to Brittany because Brittany is the main land where they have a lot of cows. It's raining, raining makes good grass, good grass make good cows and make good gut for playing tennis. Before, in 1875 it did start in Lyon. The neighborhood was Gerland part and in Gerland was the huge slaughterhouse and we are for the same reason in Brittany.

There was indeed plenty of grass to nourish the cows in the countryside of Brittany. With seven slaughterhouses surrounding Babolat's gut factory, workers process locally sourced quality cow gut into the world's best natural gut tennis string. They need two cows for every one string which is part of the reason Babolat moved from Lyon. Because before cow gut they used...

Sheep gut and we change from sheep gut to cow gut in the 70s beginning 80s because the racquet went bigger and the tension was higher so imagine the quantity of sheep — and especially not cat gut because imagine how many cat we have to kill to play one match.

Okay so thankfully no cats, but in the early 20th century tennis grew in popularity which led to the top players demanding thinner strings and above all, higher tensions. The famous Musketeers worked alongside Albert Babalot to develop a string that would change the game. In 1925 the Musketeers were given string samples listed alphabetically. Once they had reached sample V they stopped and said 'V is superior' hence the name VS. 'V Superior' — V S. Worldwide demand for tennis products came immediately after the war, and manufacturers showed interest in synthetic materials. Third-generation Paul Babolat began distributing Babolat products across the globe. To meet the demands of the growing game of tennis, Babolat offered tennis players the option of synthetic strings. Athletes continued for years to dominate the tennis scene using Babolat strings, one of which was Björn Borg. I got to meet Borg in the early 90s when we were both training at the same tennis academy. He'd run out of racquets as he was stringing them so tightly with his VS natural gut hybrid that the frames were breaking. I lent him one of mine as we were using the same model. He borrowed my racquet and I did my best to borrow some of his style. It's a shame neither of us had a Babolat racquet. Just a few years later the Pure Drive came along and revolutionized the game.

Clearly when they came out with a new racquet in '94 it was with the Pure Drive, that's when everything started to make a huge revolution.

After the victory of Carlos Moya in Roland Garros and the company starting to really take off because lots of people were wondering what was this blue racquet, and so it was very exciting we receive requests from people from everywhere.

And why because for the very first time they came up with a racquet that was working for pro players as well as intermediate, recreational-level players.

And that was the beginning of the story with the first racquet, and that was really the start of this crazy story.

And then another great time was when we discovered a young kid called Rafael Nadal. And this kid was just amazing and the guy here at the R&D discovered that he played a different way the racquet was doing this, and so we created the Pure Aero — it was called AeroPro Drive at the time — and it was another level.

All the innovation is coming from the players and I would say that this is the way we master innovation today: observation. Observation of the player. Not only to define the way he play, but mostly to define the way he is interacting with his racquet.

Why we're based in Annecy is because we wanted with Babolat to shake things up in the sub goods industry and on bags, apparel, and shoes. Annecy is the capital of the outdoor (industry) we could say worldwide. Many of the big companies today have their headquarters or subsidiary here and there's a big culture of product and product development. I think that we can take the best of what's happening in the running world or the outdoor world and try to see how we could mix it with the tennis knowledge and the tennis world and bring new things that has never been seen before.