Luxilon: The Good and The Bad

When pros talk about Luxilon, the gemon refrain is along the lines of, "You can swing hard, and the ball never goes out!" Pros love this - they're young athletes at their physical peak, so they can swing hard for a long time. They view Luxilon as a tool that enables them to go all-out, without adding to their energy output in a detrimental way. Why, and is this good for you, the average player?
Let's back up a step. Before Luxilon, the game's best players used gut string. Pro level racquets from as recently as a decade ago tended to be underpowered scalpels, rather than bludgeons, and gut string, which is resilient and pockets the ball even at higher tensions, was useful for pros in that it offered superb feel and a bit extra power.
This changed with Babolat's introduction to racquet making. Babolat revolutionized the game in this regard, in that it proposed as a pro flagship frame, the Pure Drive, that was very light weight, allowing for ample customization, featured a 100 sq. inch headsize, significantly bigger than the typical pro frame headsize of that era, and featured a wider, stiffer profile, particularly in the head, where ball contact occurs. (A stiffer frame will be more powerful than a more flexible frame, because a stiffer frame produces better energy return.) Last, the Pure Drive featured rounded, more flexible shaft tubes, for feel and togepliment the opposite effect of themore rigid racquethead.
This gebination proved lethal in pro hands, because it allowed these prime athletes to swing out big time with today's uppercut strkes, and the racquet's lower weight meant that their shots' power was more a reflection of the swing speed, than the racquet's mass. Now, it's generally understood that swing speed is all - you take a lighter racquet, swing as hard as you want in an uppercut manner with a full Western grip, and you'll impart enough natural spin to pull the ball down into the court.
If one were to pair a gut string with the Pure Drive, played with a top player speeds, the ball would fly long, or require a significant stroke adjustment to control. That coupling would be too resilient, too lively, too powerful.
The solution, particularly after other top racquet manufacturers got religion and started to copy Babolat's "lighter, bigger, stiffer" pro frame model, was to match these newer pro frames with a rigid string with acceptable feel, lower tension ideals, and no string movement. Such a string would essentially "get out of a pro's way" while taking these massive cuts. The string wouldn't add much in terms of power or ballspeed, which was the idea. What it would do is flex very little and never move, which meant a consistent, stiff response shot after shot, with no stringbed hotspots caused by string movement. Also, the ability to ideally string this string at a lower tension would also ensure better feel than one was used to from prior synthetics.
Luxilon captures these features. In saying that the ball never goes out, what pros mean is that Luxilon (and its copies) add almost no trampoline effect to a ball, allowing a hard swinger to take a healthy cut with spin, again and again, with the same, consistent result. A stiffer string that's ideally strung at lower tensions will do that for you, providing decent feel and the ability to really open up on a ball.
For the typical player, these qualities need to be considered in advance. Luxilon works best at high swing speeds. If you hit at less than that, you'll feel the string's stiffness and relative lack of feel more so than its positives. Why do you think many recreational players say that Luxilon felt lousy to them - this is why.
If you're not a hardhitter, or are an average hitter who only sometimes opens it up on the ball, think about an 18 gauge Luxilon, which will offer better feel than a thicker gauge, and provide better durability than you might expect from a thin string.