Comparing Two Head Prestiges

The Head Prestige line has a long history. It was targeted at better player who prefer a heavy and stable racket with impeccable feel.

I strung and played with two Head Prestiges for a friend recently, and he asked if I could post some of my views on this blog.

Head Youtek IG Prestige Mid (link)

The grommets of this racket are capped. It is aesthetically pleasing, but makes stringing a little more challenging with the blocked views of where the holes are.

Before stringing, I wondered how to deal with blocked holes. After some thought, I threaded the outer crosses before tensioning the outer mains so that no holes would be blocked later.

Head Graphene Prestige Rev Pro (link)

Likewise, the crosses were threaded first to avoid the blocked hole.

Playtest:
Prestige Mid
- This racket played very traditional to the Prestige Line.
- Weight was hefty and de-polarized. With the weight quite evenly distributed, I could feel some "resistance" near the throat when swinging.
- Stability was good and comfort even better!
- Although the published stiffness states RA63, it felt much more softer and flexier, especially in the hoop. 
- After a few hits with this syn gut strung racket, I felt that a stiffer string or a higher tension should have been used to "tighten" the hoop flex to improve accuracy.
- Power was very low, perhaps worsened by the hoop flex.
- Adding lead tape came to mind immediately, until I realised stock weight was already almost 350g, so there was not that much room to customise.


Prestige Rev Pro
- When I took an "air swing", the first impression was how light and fast this racket was.
- The weight is definitely polarized. So much that the throat felt a little hollow, but it was very fast and super easy to swing. So much so, that my partner kept contacting the ball way too early!
- Despite the open pattern, power was very low. In fact, I felt it was even lower than the Prestige Mid. I cannot understand how the swingweight of this can be 329 kg/cm² whereas the Prestige Mid's was 317 kg/cm².
- Flex and comfort felt the same as the Mid.
- Out of curiousity, I taped a 11 grams piece of lead right at 12 o'clock to beef up the power. That brought the swingweight up by about 36 kg/cm² to a tour pro level of 365 kg/cm^2.
- After adding the lead, the stringbed came to life! Power and ball pocketing increased, the racket flexed less and more spin could be generated.
- Surprisingly, even at this ridiculously high level of swingweight, neither my partner nor myself felt that the racket wielded too heavily.
- Another observation was that this racket seemed to play better hitting flat shots. Both with and without the added lead, steep swipes to try to generate more spin yielded poor to average results. Ironically, it was the flatter strokes that threw up more spin. Strange!
- The advantage of this Rev Pro, is the light and polarized weight, offering plenty of room to add lead customisations.
- However, the signature feel of the Prestige line has been completely forsaken. This played totally different from the Mid.