Wilson Sporting Goods Co. has just announced the introduction of a new shoe that is better suited to the changing nature of how tennis pros are playing the game.
Sliding is an increasingly popular technique competitive tennis players utilize to gain speed and agility advantages in match play where points can be won or lost in milliseconds. Wilson Labs, the innovation hub at Wilson, developed the Glide to help tennis players expertly slide into a shot, and claims that the shoe allows players to recover up to 30 percent faster to the next ball.
“The Glide is a completely new type of performance tennis shoe and is a direct reflection of how the speed of the game has changed,” said Hans-Martin Reh, general manager of racquet sports. “In studying how players use sliding, particularly younger players, it was clear current performance tennis shoes are not designed to protect the athlete and accentuate the sliding movement. We knew that if we could develop a way to do both, we had the opportunity to revolutionize tennis footwear and provide our athletes with a new level of speed and efficiency not previously available.”
The shoe, which took Wilson Labs footwear engineers, materials experts and designers four years to develop, has been designed to allow players to precisely control forward and lateral slides on hard court surfaces. In play-testing, the Glide enhanced players’ natural speed, agility and quickness to command shots on the run, even stretched out wide shots.
The Glide retails for $199 and is available now at specialty retailers and select tennis academies worldwide.