How To Buy A Tennis Racquet
A couple months ago I decided to replace my 90’s era racquet with something new and shiny. It very quickly became an overwhelming process. Head, by itself, has two dozen different racquets in the YOUTEK line, in addition to its older and lower end technologies. And that’s just one company — there are half a dozen well known brands, each with the same bewildering array of options, and another dozen lesser known companies of competitive quality.
What’s a player to do?
One thing I noticed was that many of the racquets have player sponsors. This led me to believe that the racquet makers can not differentiate between their products at a technical level, and thus they are forced to use celebrity endorsements to sell their goods. Want to play like Federer? Buy a Wilson. Want to play like Nadal? Buy a Babolat.
I posed this question to Tyler Cowen in an email, and his response (in its entirety):
Likely so, yes…
Tyler
I pored through Tennis Warehouse reviews, and eventually ended up with the Head YOUTEK IG Speed 18x20, because of mentions on how customizable the racquet is. You can apparently alter how a racquet feels by adding weights, changing grips, and using different strings.
And then a bunch of articles about co-poly strings on the pro circuit got me thinking about the physics of tennis and whether or not anybody without a profit motive had actually studied the millions of little knobs (frame stiffness, head balance, string tension, string composition, etc) that are tweakable. That led me to Technical Tennis, a fascinating, though admittedly sometimes dry book on the physics of tennis.
Much of the book rings true to me, but it is contrary to popular advice about racquets and strings. It is a liberating book, because the big point is that not much of the racquet and string characteristics actually matter. The technology changes the feel, but as long as you roughly get the weight and head size right, everything else is subjective and does not affect performance.
The most important bits are, in my opinion:
- A wide head racquet is more stable. You can simulate this with a smaller head racquet by placing weight at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions.
- Weight slows swing speed, but increases rebound power. In the end, the two balance each other out and you should go for the racquet that feels the most natural.
- A drop in string tension, contrary to popular belief, does not materially increase power. A difference in 10 lbs of tension requires a change in swing speed of only 1.4 mph in order to compensate for the change in rebound speed. Newly strung strings regularly drop 10 lbs in tension within just a few hours of play.
- Rather, string tension affects rebound angle. A lower tension causes the ball to bounce off the strings at a greater angle. A difference of just a degree or so can direct the ball a few feet away from where it might have landed at another tension, thus the illusion of power. Lower tensions tend to rebound outwards towards the back of the court, and higher tensions tend to rebound inwards towards the net.
- Note this is easily compensated for by changing your grip. I have always suspected that players who string at lower tensions tend to have more western grips (in essence, they’re aiming lower).
- String tension also affects the sound on impact. In an experiment with pro players presented with identical racquets strung at different tensions, those wearing ear plugs did worse than guessing at which racquet was which.
In the end, my advice is this: do not worry about performance, and buy the racquet that makes you happiest. For some, this might mean finding a comfortable racquet. For others, it might be a celebrity endorsement, or even the color of the racquet (I think the look of racquets for the most part is atrocious).
Final note. I’ve only talked about the racquet and string characteristics mentioned in Technical Tennis, but the book contains all sorts of other physics about surfaces, swing mechanics, and other important aspects of the game. Highly recommended.
