I met an interesting chap named Z. He claimed to be an NTRP 1.0 but runs me all over the court, front to back, left to right. He places the ball very well.
Claiming that he only started playing tennis from Nov 2013, his backhand slice is almost unreturnable! It skids extremely LOW, hard and fast after hitting the ground. How do I return these shots that are only 3 or 4 inches off the ground? He makes Steffi Graf's backhand look like child's play!
Then, I realised what his racket was! He was using the 16x15 Wilson Pro Staff 95s!!! (link) I think... See for yourself...
He did not like the colour, so he sanded off the paintjob. Initially, I thought it looked familiar, but dismissed it as another old racket looking at the amount of paint "wear" it had. I was fooled!
After the "Aha!" moment, everything started falling in place. His footwork gave him away as a beginner. However, his forehand topspin and backhand slice were pretty good, especially the backhand.
For someone who has played tennis for only 4 months, he could generate some serious spin. I'm reminded of another playing partner, M, whose topspin shots mostly kicks up to my head level.
So I changed my strokes. I hit flat or slice off both wings and kept the ball deep and very low. Now, it's my turn to run him around.
I was extremely curious just how much spin this 16x15 could perform. So I asked if we could swap rackets for a while. He kindly agreed.
Here's my observations:
- The full poly stringjob was old. It felt a little flat.
- He did not use any dampeners, so vibrations are present.
- The Amplifeel took away a lot of ball feel. It was muted.
- Since it was full poly, control was very good. It felt a little like syn gut in the 60s. There was no hints at all that this had only 15 cross strings.
- The flex felt just right, neither too stiff nor too flexy. It was a nice compromise that offered comfort and yet maintaining the level of accuracy I expected.
- Relaxed hits had ordinary spin. But when I stepped it up, the spin increased! It was a matter of watching the ball kick up to his hips level versus ear level, both with the same level of net clearance. And yes, my backhand slices could probably be on par with Steffi Graf's too!
- As a comparison, I repeated the same test after swapping back to my 16x18 Yamaha strung with syn gut at varied tension. (similar to the Hammer5.8 link)
- The Yamaha fared better for spin. Much better. Even with about 7-8 hours of use on the syn gut, the spin latitude is much wider. I could whip and the spin increases. But with the poly strung 95s, the range of spin is less. In other words, with relaxed hits, the Yamaha had more spin. When I hit hard, it was also the Yamaha that outshone the 95s.
- One significant difference I felt was the very low swingweight of the 95s. The specs stated 305 with balance at 32.08cm. It did feel very light and maneuverable, very fast.
- However, the plowthrough and the feel of compressing the ball was absent. The poly did not give much pocketing as well, compared to the syn gut. Ball directional changes also needed more effort or accuracy would suffer.
- If I owned this racket, I would beef up the swingweight and stick with syn gut. I wonder how it will play with syn gut strung with varied tension?
Note:
As a recreational player, I hit with many different partners. I rarely meet players that generate more spin than me, but there are. So it is very different when I am on the receiving end of this amounts of spin instead of from the hitting perspective. That's why I had problems determining whether the 95s was indeed a spinny racket initially.
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