ASHAWAY & BLACK KNIGHT EXTEND DEAL WITH DAVID PALMER

Ashaway Racket Strings and Black Knight Enterprises have extended their long-term sponsorship agreements with squash great David Palmer. The two-time World Open Champion has been an Ashaway sponsored player for more than ten years and with Black knight for 3 years. He has recently begun playing with Ashaways new PowerNick^® 19, the world's thinnest squash string. The terms of the agreements were not disclosed.

"I'm very happy about the agreement," said the 34-year-old Lithgow, New South Wales, native who is now US based in Orlando, Florida. "I've been with the company for a long time. I have had a great relationship with them, and obviously love the string, so I was happy that they were still keen to have me on."

Currently ranked number 15 in the world by PSA, Palmer has been Australia's top squash player for most of the past decade. In addition to his two World Open crowns in 2002 and 2006, and four British Open trophies, he has reached the finals in 53 tournaments since turning pro in 1995, and claimed some 26 tour titles. In a remarkable show of consistency, in August of 2010 Palmer completed ten full years in the world's top ten!

Said Ashaway's Steve Crandall, "We are also 'keen' to have David in our stable and are delighted that he continues his career playing with Ashaway string. He is not only a great player, but a great ambassador as well, both for our products and for the sport."

A long-time user of Ashaway's popular PowerNick 18, Palmer recently switched to Ashaway's latest Zyex^®-based innovation, PowerNick 19. After play-testing the string during development, Palmer began using the final production version in tournament play beginning in November 2010. He said the new string "feels excellent," and gives him, "a little bit more power, a little bit more touch. On top of that, it looks really good: the black string with the white Ashaway logo stenciling looks really good and stands out well on the court."

He also likes the durability of PowerNick 19. "The great thing about the PowerNick 18 was that I could never bust the stuff," he said. "PowerNick 19 is not lasting quite as long—it is thinner, after all—but I'm still getting a long time out of my racquets. It's great not to have to worry about restringing my racquets every two or three matches. With this I can go to a tournament and have my racquets all strung up and not have to worry. I can often use the same racquet for the whole tournament which is what I like to do."