Wilson Sporting Goods Co. has introduced the Glide, a high-performance tennis shoe designed to support, control and enhance how players slide on hard courts.
According to Wilson, sliding has become an increasingly popular technique that competitive tennis players use during match play where points can be won or lost in milliseconds.
The shoe was developed by Wilson Labs, the company’s innovation hub, to help players slide into a shot and recover as much as 30 percent faster to be in position for the next ball. The Glide, which took Wilson Labs four years to develop, allows players to more precisely control forward and lateral slides on hard-court surfaces. In tests, the Glide enhanced players’ speed and agility in shots on the run — even stretched-out side shots.
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“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 for Wilson. “In studying how players use sliding, particularly younger players, it was clear that 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 Glide is sold at specialty retailers and select tennis academies worldwide for $199.
