1890 - Wood rackets were made from ash, spruce, beech and maple wood combinations.

1939 - In 1939, Bobby Riggs racked up his best record of wins but unfortunately still had to play all of his tournaments with an unwieldy wood racket.

1950's - Althea Gibson had one of the most powerful serves in the women's game. Gibson kept her conventional wooden racket by her side even though Howard Head, one of the first racket manufacturers, had experimented with an oversized wooden racket. This oversized racket didn't take off because the head was prone to warping.

The wooden racket was slowly becoming passe as manufacturers decided to push the envelope. From the wooden racket spawned the steel and aluminum rackets. Pancho Gonzales used a Spalding aluminum Smasher to win the longest singles match at Wimbledon against Charlie Passarell in 1969.

Martina Navratilova was the first top-seeded pro player to switch from the graphite racket of the '70s to the new wide-body racket of the '80s. The wide body racket was stiffer, allowing more energy to be transferred into the ball with every shot.

Steffi Graf used a wide-body racket made popular in the '80s. But unlike the '80s models the '90s version had an increased racket head from 75 to 130 square inches that attracted more professional players.

1910 - These mostly heavy and difficult to handle wood rackets were all the rage because there were no other rackets to choose from.

1930 - Even though racket manufacturers tried to change the shape, size and weight of the wood racket, the racket stayed pretty constant through the '30s.

1940's - Wooden rackets only had two ways of increasing power. One was to reduce the string tension so there would be a springier response, but this made the ball harder to control. Second was to use a heavy frame to generate more power, but the heavier the frame the harder to maneuver. There was still work to do.

1962 - On his way to winning the Grand Slam title, Rod Laver used the Dunlop Maxply wood racket. The Maxply became the classic wood racket that many champions would end up using in later years.

John McEnroe used a Dunlop Maxply wooden frame racket during the 1981 Wimbledon championships that he won, but then switched over to a mid-sized, wide-body racket that he used during his Wimbledon wins in 1983 and 1984.

Tennis manufacturers took what they learned about wide-body rackets in the '80s and transferred it to the '90s by creating even bigger racket heads. Prince racket manufacturers and '89 French Open winner Michael Chang teamed up to introduce the "long-body" racket that was an inch longer than the conventional 27-inch racket

For the new millennium, tennis racket manufacturer, Head, created a completely new racket called the Ti Radical which was co-designed by Andre Agassi. The titanium racket has already been used by Agassi during his French and U.S. Open wins in 1999 and he will use it at this year's French Open.