
Babolat is a French-based tennis and badminton equipment company, best known for its racquets which are used by many top players such as Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal, Carlos Moya, Fernando Gonzalez, Igor Andreev and Robby Ginepri. Babolat is a company based in France that has made strings since 1875, when Pierre Babolat created the first strings made of natural gut. Babolat continued to focus on strings, until 1994, when it became a "total tennis" company. That is, Babolat began producing racquet frames in that year and selling them in Europe. It then moved on to Japan, and then the USA in 2000. The popularity of Babolat racquets picked up extremely quickly in North America and Europe, trademarked by the easily identifiable double lines across the strings of the racquet face, and along the racquet frame itself.