Yonex was established in 1946 originally manufacturing industrial wooden fishing floats which changed to producing badminton racquets in 1957.
Yonex diversified into the tennis industry in 1969 with its first aluminium racquet, the T-7000. By 1980 Yonex had signed top tennis players Billy Jean King and Martina Navratilova, who of course would go on to win multiple Grand Slams throughout their careers. One year later, Yonex entered the golf industry developing the first golf club to combine carbon graphite and persimmon.
Throughout Yonex R&D teams have worked restlessly to produce several new innovations to improve the playability of the next range of racquets. This included the ISOMETRIC head shape, which celebrates over 25 years being a key component in Yonex racquets along with the Oval Pressed Shaft (OPS), which can still be found in the current range of EZONE and VCORE racquets.
Yonex tour player Martina Hingis became the youngest player to reach world #1 at 16yrs and 6 Months in 1997. After this other Yonex stars enjoyed Wimbledon successes with Richard Krajicek taking the tile in 1998, later followed by Lleyton Hewitt in 2002 and Angelique Kerber in 2018. Latterly Naomi Osaka won back to back Slams at the US 2018 and Australia 2019 with her Yonex EZONE 98.
Yonex works closely with its current top players and Grand Slam champions including; Stanislas Wawrinka, Angielique Kerber and Naomi Osaka and rising stars Belinda Bencic and Nick Kyrgios to make sure that its racquets, shoes, clothing and equipment continue meet the exacting standards of the modern day player including providing the expert stringing service at the Australian Open as the Official Stringers. This together with its links with performance centres, clubs and coaches around the world enables it to provide the highest quality of equipment, footwear and clothing to enhance the game of players of all levels.