Is Racket testing the biggest folly of the tennis industry?
Maybe.
I’ve demoed a few rackets and many of my tennis partners have also gone on demoing binges. I know from experience that I have not clicked with a single racket within days of testing it, and this begs the question: what if you chose the wrong stick? It takes months before I can really decipher whether or not a racket was designed for my hands, and my game. And so I ask again, is racket demoing a pointless endeavor? I do not believe it is pointless, but I also do not believe it to be a productive use of a rec player’s sparse hitting windows.
Let’s say you demo four rackets over the course of a week. And then four more over the course of the next week. Trading off rackets every few games during match play and then again during groundie sessions. Perhaps distinctions will be made, but the technology produced today is so homogenous that the differences will be minor from brand to brand, and model to model. You may detect these differences but you will not understand their impact until you really learn how to drive the racket. And I will poset here that we cannot really drive a racket until we have been through the trenches with it - I’m talking about ugly three set losses were everything implodes in the third set. The kind of third set where you keep glancing at the racket in your hand, wondering if you’re using the right weapon, or if there might be a more reliable one out there.
Maximizing a racket’s potential takes a long time. It takes a long time to really drive a racket well. You might swing one racket with a full blown western grip and another with an eastern grip. I’ve noticed that the smaller the head the more prone I am to eastern grips, and the larger the head the more I tend towards extreme western grips. Maybe that’s just me though. Groundstrokes are one beast. Volleys and half volleys are another beast entirely. Let’s say it takes you two months to master the groundstrokes on a demo or new stick. It will take you at least half a year to have the slightest idea on how to land a drop volley without your opponent running up and blasting a forehand pass.
With the potential lengthy learning curve of a racket’s tendencies I again ask, is it useful to go on demoing binges? Personally, I do not believe it is. But I’ve heard the other side many times too. It just depends on the player. I am done demoing though. My philosophy for changing rackets is to read the reviews and go for a racket with similar specs to my previous favorite, unless of course you’re going for massive changes in your game and how you impose yourself on your opponent.
Then again, the year just turned and so did the entire racket inventory of every single retailer in the country. There are new rackets left and right - volkl, wilson, head, dunlop, you name it. All of a sudden I’ve detected the slightest notion of doubt in my trusty older frames. What if some of these new sticks will gave my groundies an extra 10mph of pop? I’m thinking about a demo binge right this second. Wow, will we ever wield the proper stick? Here’s to flipping off the new frames and continuing to rip on the older models.
