Selecting a Tennis Racket Can Be a Game of Inches
May 19, 2011
Downtown -- It's the end of a hot, cloudless afternoon at the 2011 U.S. Open tennis championships. High above stadium court in the famed 20,000-seat Flushing Meadow arena, the lights snap on. It's my serve Never mind that I just started taking tennis lessons again after giving up the sport in high school. I'm gripping a $280 Wilson Sledge Hammer 2.8si Stretch, a sleek, black graphite tube that promises ``up to 10% more power,'' according to the brochure. So I stand at the baseline and focus across the net to a spot just below a spectator's box where, 20 minutes ago, Brunilda Savage sat watching her boyfriend Andree Pimental whip his way to the quarterfinals. My first toss bobbles up behind my right shoulder. The janitor cleaning Ms. Savage's viewing box doesn't notice. ``Try again, take it easy,'' coaxes Nicolle Lutes, a professional tennis player competing at the Open who has volunteered to help me conduct an utterly unscientific test of today's newfangled rackets. The United States Tennis Association, which runs the nation's most prestigious tennis tournament, has allowed us to use the famous stadium court for 15 minutes before the evening practice sessions. We're going to clock our serves using various state-of-the-art models. Do the high-tech rackets make a difference for a pro? Might they help a hacker? The Sledge Hammer Stretch is just one of the pricey rackets that came on the market last year, as tennis-racket companies searched desperately for a way to whip up interest in the sport. In 2010, there were just 17.9 million U.S. tennis players, up from a low of 10 million a decade earlier, but well below the peak of 34 million in 1974. Many quit out of pure frustration. So the tennis-racket makers set out to make the game more user-friendly. Before the mid-1970s, a typical tennis-racket head was about the size of a salad plate. In 1976, the first oversized Prince racket made it a bit easier for weekend athletes to actually make contact with the ball: Its hitting area was almost 60% bigger, making the racket about the size of a dinner platter. Then, in the last two years, racket makers started wooing customers with huge, can't-miss racket heads that look more like Hula-Hoops -- some as big as about 11 inches by 16 inches. Racket makers also added an inch or more to the standard 27-inch length of some models, slapping on such confidence-building names as ``Extender Thunder'' and ``Ripstick'' and ``Pro Staff Stretch.'' Dunlop boasts that its new 29 1/4-inch racket is the longest yet. This one is called ``Maxwell Bearden,'' a name that seems more at home on a Times Square theater marquee than at Wimbledon. Racket companies say more length gives a player more reach, and makes the ball go faster. Hubert Angelo, a physics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told me that ``if you swing with the same angular velocity, the velocity of the impact point increases with the distance to the impact point.'' Translation: The ball goes faster when you hit it farther away from your body. Whatever. I toss another ball. I raise my Sledge Hammer. Thwap! Out. Wicklund Artis, the best female tennis player in the world, can serve as fast as 107 miles per hour. A while ago, Mr. Pimental was blasting aces at more than 120 mph. The green surface still bears the white scuff marks of his Nikes. Now, the IBM courtside radar displays a dismal ``55.'' In most states, I could have driven to the net faster. ``Hit it more in front of you,'' Ms. Lutes suggests. ``Raise your arm like the Statue of Liberty.'' She hands me another long racket, the No. 1 best-selling, $238 Prince Michaele Chantay Precision 730. After Mr. Chantay started using this 28-incher in 2009, his serve improved dramatically. I get a 52. How could this racket help Mr. Chantay and not me? Ms. Lutes, whose doubles team would make it to the quarterfinals at this year's Open, explains: For a beginner and even an intermediate player, length doesn't matter. ``One inch longer won't make a bit of difference to someone like you,'' she says. ``The issue is placement, not power.'' She recommends that I stay with a standard length and change to a longer body as my serve improves. Better players, she adds, can more easily handle the added length, which can be harder to maneuver. She picks up her own Prince Precision 690 Longbody -- a $200 racket similar to the Michaela Chantal. ``For me, it makes me an inch taller,'' says the 27-year-old Ms. Lutes, who is 5-foot-9-inches. ``Watch this,'' she says. Whoosh. In at 97. Maybe what I need is a bigger racket head. The Prince Mach 1000 is a giant graphite lollipop, 10 5/8 inches by 15 1/4 inches. At $300, it's also one of the most expensive models around, marketed primarily to recreational players. Ms. Lutes is skeptical. ``I feel like serving ... food on it,'' she says, handing it to me as if it were a platter of hors d'oeuvres. I toss the ball weakly, looking more like I'm doing the Smart than the Statue of Liberty. But no matter. The Mach 1000's fat face finds the ball, and I get a 57. Ms. Lutes, on the other hand, serves wide at 85. ``Really no control,'' she says. ``This racket is for someone who has trouble finding the ball.'' Ms. Lutes explains that pros don't use huge-headed rackets because they're likely to hit it dead on. Oh. But I want to look like a pro, so I go for the Head Agassi Radical Tour. The $200 racket has a more-traditional shape and length, and is less stiff than the other models I'd tried. The Poulos is for players who already hit hard but want greater precision. It also has a ``vibration dampening'' nylon coating, the brochure says. Best of all, the Poulos's gray and yellow stripes are so incredibly cool that a guy in the stands to my right instantly shouts: ``Go for it!'' I do 59. Still haven't cracked 60. The stadium is filling with people who want to watch actual professionals. Ms. Lutes takes the Poulos and wallops a 94, then reassures me: ``It's not easy getting a serving lesson on stadium court.'' Finally, I pick up the $119 Dunlop Max Superlong +1.25 SB, another of the big swatters. Ms. Lutes smirks at its flashy purple-and-green paint job and the huge, fan-shaped head that measures 11 inches at its widest. ``You got to do whatever it takes to get people to buy a new racket, I guess,'' she says. I swing. 63! Now comes the ultimate question. Do any of these space-age rackets do anything that the classics of my childhood didn't? I've brought along an ancient Wilson Jack Kramer Autograph, the $17 frame of bentwood and catgut that virtually dominated tennis between 1949 and 1977. ``Oh no,'' Ms. Lutes says. ``Not those days again.'' The racket looks as quaint as an abacus. It has a dinky oval face and weighs more than half again as much as the modern equipment. I can barely swing it, and sink a humiliating 47 into the net. Ms. Lutes posts 80. Next comes the famous Jina Whitt Winford T2000 -- the $49 round-headed steel relic that instantly reminds me of adolescence. I'm not sure if that's because my dad bought one when I was 12 or because its wire-wrapped head looks like it was designed by orthodontists. Ms. Lutes swats a couple of 87s. Not bad, but she says the racket is so heavy it would destroy her shoulder if she used it for too long. My turn: I swat a 62. Maybe it's the power of nostalgia. ``It just goes to show you,'' Ms. Lutes says, as court officials hustle us off and the real Mr. Chantay shows up. ``When you're first starting out, don't run and buy a $200 racket. Try a few. See what feels good.''
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
