Testing a Blade 98 v7 18X20 that belongs to a friend who is connected with Wilson. It was originally strung with Luxilon Smart string at a pretty low tension. To say I didn't like that string is an understatement. It had no grip on the ball in this dense pattern and I couldn't tell any difference between it and a regular string in how it was supposed to firm up or play soft depending on how hard the ball was hit. I cut it out and restrung it with my go-to Tourna Silver 7 Tour 17 gauge at 46 pounds. Had about a 30 minute ball machine session tonight.
I have no experience with any previous generation Blades as I was a Babolat player until the beginning of this year when I switched to the SW104. Countervail and arguments about what it adds or subtracts from a frame's feel is kind of lost on me because I've never had an extended hit with a Blade that didn't have it.
Two immediately obvious things. It's an inch shorter than the racquet I'm using, and it's also about 35 grams lighter. My current racquet has a swingweight of just under 350 and the Blade v7 18X20 is supposed to be 334, but it feels like it is less than that.
Hitting groundstrokes with it is kind of surprising. There's an unexpectedly high amount of power considering how light it feels. The impact feel is crisp with no extraneous vibrations. It's a very solid and dampened, but not muted, contact feel. I really wouldn't call it a plush feel though. The sweetspot feels large and wide for the size of frame, and seems located just slightly below the center of the stringbed. My SW104 doesn't have that lively, springy feel on impact, and that may be what countervail is removing from the feel. I had more troubles with my forehand than my backhand - my forehand is a more complicated stroke that can really go off when the timing is bad, and it was just hard to get the right timing with such a large weight difference from my normal racquet.
Volleys were tough for me. I kept mis-hitting high on the stringbed and there's just not enough mass for the racquet to make a good shot off that kind of contact - the ball tends to pop up and the racquet deflects a lot. Mis-hits off to the side also twist the racquet a fair amount. Catch the ball slightly low on the stringbed and there's really good feel with excellent control and ball speed.
Once I got used to the shorter racquet, slightly low sweetspot, and light swingweight, serves and overheads were good. The high power levels made it easy to generate pace, and the low twistweight made it feel easy to hold off pronation until the last moment, generating even more racquet head speed.
Launch angle is slightly lower than with my SW104 and its 18X19 pattern. The lack of mass in the hoop also made the Blade 98 feel less capable when trying to hit a looping topspin shot. It just doesn't feel like I can get the ball to compress and the strings to bite the ball the same way as with my heavier SW104. At the stock weight, it just feels like a better racquet for a flatter hitter. Underspin backhands had a tendency to float more as well, and lacked a bit of pace and penetration. That could likely be helped a bit by going down a few pounds in tension.
Overall, the v7 Blade 98 feels like a very good platform for customization. Other than the one inch shorter length, the other stability and plow through issues I had seemed like they could all be fixed by adding weight to the frame. I like the impact feel better than my SW104, which is pretty clublike and muted.
Here's four minutes of raw hitting against a ball machine.