Swingweight Addiction!

Whenever I see someone examining a new racket, the first, and almost the only aspect they talk about, is weight.

There seem to be a wrong association between a racket's weight and performance. 

To me, swingweight is paramount. Not only in tennis, but baseball bats, golf clubs and hockey sticks as well!

Swingweight determines power, affects racket flex, stability, string tension, plowthrough, impact feel, pocketing, racket balance, swing timing and many more.

Here's two excellent articles I found online:
1. Swing Weight of a Bat (Why MOI matters more than weight)
2. Tennis Racquet Weight. Does it Matter?

As a recreational player, I mainly play topspin from the baseline. Occasionally, I would change styles and do some serve and volley plus drop shots. I play both singles and doubles friendly games.

Naturally, as a baseline-basher, I like heavy sticks. Most of my preferred rackets are about 370g. A few are just shy of 390g.

It's not a conscious act. I did not go out to search for heavy sticks nor add lead till I hit my "target". There was no target weight in the first place. It was all based on feel.

So I gradually increased lead until I felt it was a little too heavy, then I backed off, removed a few grams and stopped there. It's something like the swingweight1 and swingweight2 concept. (link)

However, I did not test out my adjustments thoroughly enough. What worked well for baseline-bashing was disastrous for doubles volleys. And my heavy sticks tend to make me hit too hard for drop shots, turning them into sitting ducks in mid-court!

During crunch time, attempts to hit faster serves resulted in the racket swinging my hand instead of my hand leading the stick! And in very fast doubles volley wars, my wrist bears the full wrath from off-centre hits!

TFCC (link) crept-in. It was painful and I had to stop. Fortunately, I detected it very very early. Recovery was very fast. I was up and running in two weeks.

If you are baseline basher and like the powerful plowthrough of heavy rackets, remember to have a lighter setup for those other tennis shots you rarely play.

In case you are curious, the average swingweight of my baseline bashing sticks is about 375 kg-cm². I have since brought it down to about 340-350.

High swingweight is extremely addictive! Please play with care!