World famous in all of Holland......

Holland has known a few serious tennisracket manufacturers.

pictures off some of their models can be found in the “rackets by brands” pages.

Pinguin:

wellknown for their quality classic wooden rackets.

they were even licensed by slazenger to produce rackets for them.

MANY SLAZENGER rackets sold in the netherlands were made by pinguin.

Like some other famous brands they had problems converting to metal and graphite.

The production proces of those materials differed so much from the wooden rackets that they could not keep up.

Life Sport:

they had a modern high tech approach towards racket manufacture.

Introducing the “ varioflex ” technology, in cooperation with the technical university of delft, resulted in high numbers of racket sales in the 1980’s in holland.

They briefly made the Isoflex racket that had a similar stringing pattern as the Mad Raq’s from madeline hauptman, but was taken off the market.

Rumour has it that they were taken to court by hauptman because  of the patent on the special 3-string pattern held by her.

During the 1990 they slowly lost marketshare and finally  went out of business at the end of the century.

holwha:

this abreviation of holland whale, manufactured mainly badminton rackets.

to complete their gamma they produced quite a few nice low to midrange tennisrackets during the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s.

This small player on the racket market soon lost it against the moguls from the USA and UK.

Rucanor:

The founder of the brand was selling very common canvas sportshoes.

he was sure that he would earn gold with these canvas/rubber shoes:

Ru= rubber, can=canvas and or= gold.

hence the name “ rucanor”.

in volume the no1 selling brand in tennisrackets during the latter part of the 1980’s.

starting with low range wooden rackets they soon manufactured quality rackets at reasonable prices.

rucanor brought fiberglass and graphite rackets within reach of the general public. their cooperation with gosen made them a major participant in the tennis string scene throughout europe and beyond.

the famous oilfilled ps 40 string was developed especially for their highend “ps”  tennisracket range. as most of their rackets were made by kunnan , they co-launched the micro stringing pattern with pro kennex. their racket range was endless and are easy to get in holland since everyone has had a rucanor at some point in their tenniscareer.

rucanor is still hollands largest sports equipment manufacturer.

however, their tennisracket range has shrunk to a handfull of basic models.

But there are rumours that they are planning a comeback........

Robey:

this rotterdam based sportswear company was big in tennis wear during the 1970’s and 80’s. To complement their sportswear range they had some racket models made, mainly low end wooden frames .

They were made by apollo.