For most spectators at a major sporting event, the competition begins when the players walk into the arena. For Mark Lawrence, it begins much earlier.
Behind the scenes, equipment must be prepared, specific requests understood and the subtle preferences that influence an athlete’s performance meticulously addressed often with a queue of hundreds of jobs to complete before the next match. Lawrence has spent over three decades working in this vital, yet largely invisible, side of elite sport.
Today, as Yonex’s head of stringing, he is responsible for one of those jobs that most fans rarely notice until something goes wrong. His team works through major international tournaments, preparing equipment for players who can spend years perfecting movements that come down to fractions of a second.
The job has taken Lawrence from his own shop in the 1990s to some of the biggest stages in badminton. Along the way, he has worked with generations of world-class players, including Lin Dan and India’s Lakshya Sen, and watched an occupation that once happened at the side of a court become a dedicated part of the tournament operation.
“I started back in 1994 when Yonex wanted to show people what stringing is,” Lawrence told The Indian Express. “I had a shop and used to string racquets for then world No. 1 Morten Frost. Yonex asked me to be part of the stringing team at the 1994 edition of All England, and well, I haven’t stopped since then.”
Three decades later, he is still doing the same job. The difference is the scale.
From the side of the court to a professional operation
When Lawrence began, tournament stringing was not the organised operation it is today. There were no large, dedicated workspaces with multiple stringers working through player requests. The job was often squeezed into whatever space was available around the competition.
That changed when the All England moved from Wembley to Birmingham. “That is when this concept of stringing the racquets during a tournament started,” he said.
The change was gradual. Around 2005 or 2006, dedicated spaces for stringers began becoming more common.
“Now, you see all this area which is well lit and we have multiple staff. Earlier we used to do the stringing on the side of the courts while matches were going on. Ten years into my career, I have done stringing on the arena floor.”
It is a small example of a broader change in elite sport. As competitions became more professional, so did the ecosystem around the athletes. Nutritionists, physiotherapists, analysts, equipment specialists and performance teams became increasingly embedded in the sporting operation.
Stringers were part of that transformation too. At major badminton championships today, brands such as Yonex, Victor and Li-Ning operate dedicated stringing stations where players can have their equipment prepared before or after matches.
For the athletes, it is a service. For the tournament, it is infrastructure. For Lawrence, it has been a front-row seat to the professionalisation of the sport.
When the world’s best players become regular customers
The most revealing part of Lawrence’s career is perhaps not the number of racquets he has handled, but the familiarity that comes with three decades at the top level.
Some players have distinctive equipment preferences. Others develop routines around when and how their racquets are prepared. Lakshya Sen, for instance, can become one of the busiest customers when he is on a deep run.
“When Lakshya Sen is on a winning run, his racquets need more stringing than anyone. His coach would bring five or six racquets after the game and he is probably our biggest customer when he is winning,” Lawrence said, according to The Indian Express report.
That is an unusual way to measure success. A player winning matches means more work for the person behind the scenes.
The same applies across a tournament. The deeper players go, the greater the demands on the support systems that keep them competing.
At the Delhi World Championships, Lawrence and his team handled close to 500 stringing jobs in the first two days. That workload is heavily front-loaded.
“The early days are busy, as there are so many players playing in a day. Once the tournament settles down, our work also gets a little easier, with fewer requests coming in,” he said.
For a sport built around individual performances, the workload behind those performances is anything but individual.
The details that players will not compromise on
The job also requires an understanding of the peculiarities of individual athletes. Lawrence remembers Lin Dan, one of the most successful players in badminton history, for a particularly unusual preference.
“Lin Dan had a very unique grip. Half of his handle was strapped while the other half, the tail, used to be wooden.”
It is the kind of detail that would be invisible to a casual viewer. At the highest level, however, equipment becomes personal. Players develop preferences for tension, feel and control, and those preferences can be closely tied to how they play.
Over Lawrence’s career, string tensions have changed significantly. “When I started, the average tension for a racquet used to be 28 or 29, but now anything above 30 is the standard,” he said.
The extremes have also been striking. Kenichi Tago, a former All England runner-up, had the highest tension Lawrence has worked with, at more than 34 pounds. At the other end was Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi, who uses around 25 pounds.
“Lower tension complements Yamaguchi’s game. She is not the most powerful player, so with the lower tension, she gets a slightly bigger sweet spot in the middle of the racquet, which gives her good control. When the tension is lower, the shuttle stays for a fraction longer,” Lawrence explained.
That is where the job moves beyond simply replacing broken strings. The equipment has to reflect the athlete.
The busiest part of a major tournament
The workload can become particularly intense when multiple major competitions overlap. Lawrence’s busiest tournaments came when the World Championships and Sudirman Cup were held together.
The sheer size of the field creates a logistical challenge. Players arrive from different countries, with different preferences and different levels of access to equipment support. The stringing station consequently becomes a small meeting point within the larger tournament.
Players from countries without the same depth of badminton infrastructure can use the service as well.
Of course they have local stringers in their countries, but players from developing countries do come and take advantage of the fact that they are getting free stringing and good-quality strings,” Lawrence said.
That makes the station more than a service counter for established stars.
For some athletes, particularly those from emerging badminton markets, it can offer access to equipment expertise that may not otherwise be available at home.
The Chinese exception
Even the world’s biggest badminton programmes have their own systems. China, with its large squad and deep badminton programme, travels with its own stringers.
Yet Lawrence says some Chinese players still visit the Yonex station during major events.
“The Chinese team carries their own stringers, given the large size of their squad. However, despite that, some of their players prefer to come to our stringing station during majors.”
It is an indication of how personal equipment preferences can become at the highest level. A player may have access to an entire support team and still want a particular person, machine or process to prepare the equipment they trust.
The job that follows the players, not the spotlight
There is another unusual feature of Lawrence’s career. He has been around some of the sport’s biggest moments without necessarily watching them.
When a player needs a racquet, the stringing team cannot simply stop because a major match is happening. Lawrence joked about it after the work finally eased at the tournament.
“Finally, I can watch the matches in peace, as there are no stringing requests. I missed watching PV Sindhu and Ayush Shetty in action (at the BWF World Championships).”
It is perhaps the best description of the profession. The stringer is close enough to the biggest names in the sport to know their equipment preferences, routines and quirks. But the job also requires staying away from the spectacle itself. The player gets the spotlight even as the stringer gets the next racquet ready.
Three decades, and a changing sporting business
Lawrence’s journey also says something about how elite sport has changed. When he entered the profession in 1994, stringing could be done at the edge of the arena. Today, major tournaments have dedicated spaces, multiple staff members and enough demand to make the service a significant operational requirement.
The change is not only about badminton. Modern professional sport increasingly depends on specialised people whose work is almost entirely invisible to spectators. The athlete remains the product on the field, but the performance increasingly rests on an ecosystem around them.
Lawrence has spent 30 years inside that ecosystem. He has seen players go from promising youngsters to champions, watched equipment preferences evolve and handled the racquets of athletes whose names became part of sporting history.
His own career has followed a quieter trajectory. No medals, podiums or crowds chanting his name. Instead, there are thousands of racquets, hundreds of tournament days and a long list of players who have trusted his work. And perhaps that is what makes Lawrence’s story worth telling.
For three decades, he has been working in the few feet between an athlete’s preparation and performance which is a space that fans rarely see but modern elite sport can no longer afford to ignore.