Naturally, his shots became erratic. Some long, some short and many were mishit.
He was using the Head Graphene Prestige Pro (link) strung with a multi/poly hybrid.
After testing it, I was very impressed by the spin prowess! Like the Prestige Rev Pro I tried (link), the weight was heavily polarised. It whips across very easily and quickly for spin.
Since his stringbed was worn and badly notched, he asked if I could restring it with something that would give more control.
I suggested a fullbed of soft poly and he agreed, even though he was initially hesitant, out of fear that his shoulder pain would recur. I assured him it should not.
On his first outing, he was ecstatic! He won a set against someone he usually lost both to. First serve percentages improved as did overall ball directional control.
However, when I played with him a few days later, I still noticed that same reluctance to take full swings. Although his directional control, depth and ball placement was better than before, but it still felt incomplete.
He suggested we swap sticks to play a set and we did. After three games, I found the problem.
Originally, this racket came with a leather grip. He removed it and used just two overgrips. Other than the gripsize becoming way too small for his hands (I measured his recommended gripsizing to be 4¾ inches), the racket balance went haywire!
For extremely polarised frames, very small changes in weight can have drastic effects in swing timings and control.
The leather grip probably weighed 25 grams. Each overgrip weighs about 5 grams. So, almost 15 grams was removed from the handle. Balance point would have moved up between 10-15mm!
As a result, the racket head moved too fast. It became a case of the racket swinging his hands instead of him controlling the racket!
Any wonder why he was hesitant to take full swings?
According to him, after replacing the leather grip, it played much better.
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