How to buy a tennis racquet

I found playing tennis much easier twenty years ago. If you’re thinking, “This fellow was likely in his twenties twenty years ago; he must’ve found everything – including walking and breathing – easier then,” you’re right. But it’s not just running and hitting the ball that I find more difficult – it’s coping with the advances in technology that have invaded the game.
 

Twenty years ago, I would buy a tennis racquet in ten minutes. The shopkeeper would show me a couple of Dunlop models (in wood); I’d choose one and tell him my grip size. Things are vastly different today. I recently went to a large sporting shop to buy a new tennis racquet. I found at least five major brands, each made of different material, with varying head sizes. They were also different in weight and how this weight was distributed. I had to not only examine light and heavy racquets but also light ones that were head-heavy and heavy ones that were head-light. The salesman, true to form, was not able to offer any help except to suggest that I research the internet.

So I returned home and did this. “Choosing a tennis racquet,” I typed into Google and pursued the first hit. According to tennis-warehouse.com, I needed to consider Head Size, Length, Weight and Balance, Frame Stiffness, String Pattern and Grip/Handle Systems. I didn’t know where to start. Even buying an aeroplane wouldn’t involve as many factors, I thought. 

Then I got briefly excited to find an online questionnaire to help me select my tennis racquet.

The first question was easy: Are you male or female? Next came: What is your age bracket? I didn’t like the question but I knew the answer. Then: Describe your playing level – beginner, professional or intermediate. Having played the game for 20 years, I considered myself safely past “beginner” and since the game always involved money leaving me rather than the other way around, I could not classify myself as a “professional”. So I chose “intermediate”.

Next: How would you describe your swing? My desired choice, “Erratic”, wasn’t available so I did my best with the options presented. Then: Specify the extent of spin you use. I have been known to generate some vicious spin but I think they meant intentionally so I chose “Very Little.” Next: Do you desire power or control? I wanted both, but apparently you get one at the expense of the other. I dithered a bit before choosing “power”, reasoning that I would look better hitting powerful shots out than limp shots placed with supreme control into the net.

But I was losing confidence in the questionnaire’s ability to help me. The questions that followed, asking me to describe my serve, the type of balls I prefer for different court surfaces, my breathing technique and my family’s ability to cope with cold weather, cemented this scepticism.

I decided to try a different tack. I would visit the website of different tennis racquet manufacturers, read about the features of the racquets they make and choose the one I liked. But this was much simpler to envisage than actually accomplish.

The first website I chose to visit was Wilson’s: this is how they describe their nanofoam technology: “ proprietary new material used to fill and insulate the frame tubes in strategic points inside the racquet…nano-sized silicone oxide crystals that permeate the voids between the carbon fibers at the molecular level to strengthen and enhance stability of the overall carbon matrix”.

I checked if I had inadvertently stumbled into the website of a pharmaceutical company describing its new wonder drug. I had not. Thinking that perhaps Wilson was too technologically advanced for me, I explored Babolat’s website. But reading about their woofer technology (“the first dynamic system which makes the frame and the strings interact when striking the ball”), did not help. I could only conjure up the image of the frame and strings having an argument about my stroke, which, if I brought my ears close enough, I would be able to hear.

I visited a couple of other racquet manufacturers’ websites but they added to my confusion. For example, I read that Head’s Intellifiber “transforms the ball’s mechanical energy into an electrical response that stiffens the racquet” and that Fischer’s Magnetic Speed had “equally polarized magnets at the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock positions return the frame to its original position faster”. I understood little and, more to the point, learnt nothing to help in my quest for the right tennis racquet. I gave up.

Recently I was watching the US Open on television. The winner, Rafael Nadal, who also won this year’s French Open and Wimbledon, seemed to be hitting the ball quite decently. I got a sudden brainwave. I wouldn’t do too shabbily imitating him, I thought. So I went ahead and bought the same racquet that he uses. Yesterday I tried it out. It’s nice, but I have to say that much of what they show on television is hype: when I hit the ball, it doesn’t quite travel like it does off Nadal’s racquet.