by Juan Bornaechea

From a young age, I always remember having rackets around the house. My father built a fronton (common in his region) taking advantage of the significant slope with the neighboring plots, and it was used for various disciplines such as paddle, frontenis, and tennis, even though it didn’t meet the regulation measurements. 

In the late 80s, a curious racket with a peculiar fish-tail-shaped handle end appeared at home. Rescued by my younger sister from an old Galician manor house, the racket was among a pile of firewood and other wooden objects ready to feed the boiler of the old building converted into a student hostel. It wandered around the house for a while until it ended up hanging on the wall of my youthful bedroom alongside a Pro Borg from my brother-in-law and a Spalding Pancho Gonzales racket. My numerous siblings and I inherited the passion that my parents shared for antiques, so my collection grew with their contributions, those of their friends, and other acquaintances. Among all, I must highlight my older sister, Ana, who resided in San Sebastian and was well acquainted with flea markets and brocantes in the south of France; she expanded my collection in both quantity and quality. 

That first stage of casual collecting led, many years later, in a more mature stage of my life, to a more intentional pursuit. Acquiring Jeane Cherry’s book revealed some gems in my collection that encouraged me to continue. The inability to buy “The book of the Rackets,” the collector’s Bible, led me to start a nascent search on the internet, where I discovered a website that left me amazed. Raqueta.net became my companion on this collecting journey. Its content provided a wealth of information, extreme elegance, and stunning images that captivated me. I dare not estimate how many times I visited the website. Imagine the honor of now being featured on this website, which has been a fundamental inspiration for my collection. My gratitude to Emili and Jaume for sharing their collections, especially the latter, who patiently answered each of my numerous inquiries. 

I feel a certain weight of responsibility to “contribute” something interesting to this comprehensive showcase of racket collecting that is Raqueta.net.