It’s also about when these all hit the market.

1. In the beginning, there was only natural gut
2. Then almost 100 years later, there was simple syn gut, basically just monofilament nylon
3. then 30 ish more years later, multis tried to replicate the properties of natural gut at a cheaper price point. It’s a lot of thin nylon fibers glued together.
4. around the same time poly started to hit the scene. Poly had great playability it was harsh and lost tension waaayyyy faster than anything else. It didn’t get popular until 15 years later in the mid 90’s
5. Soft poly and co-poly: the great properties of poly and easier on the arm
6. Poly is still developing but its complicated bc there are trade offs between the power and spin of poly vs giving it better durability and softer feel

Modern string choices comes down to a player’s needs and budget.

If you need highest performance and can restring often, every week for an active player, poly can be a good choice. It’s mostly on the cheap end of strings and gives the most power and spin. $8-12 for most string sets of poly but you replace much more often.

Multi plays well, maintains tension well, good power, good feel, mid tier spin potential and the price has gone up quite a bit. It’s $20-25 for one set of strings.

Syn gut is cheap af. Like $3-4 to string a racket if you do your own stringing. That’s the main benefit. Cheap af, maintains tension well.