Thanks everyone. We chose the Ezone 100L for one and Babolat Pure Drive Team for the other. I am writing out a brief review of the racquets we tested and the differing opinions.
Testers:
Kid1 (K1) 14 year old female 5’3”, about 105 pounds, 3-3.5 unofficially, high school varsity player.
Kid2(K2) 14 year old female 5’2”, about 98 pounds, 3-3.5 unoficially, high school varsity player
Adult (A) Male, mid forties, 5’9”, about 180 pounds, 4.0 rated unofficially
Both kids played with Vcore Aces using factory syn guts for the months prior, with some lead added. Adult used to play with a Prince TT Scream OS with Head PPS syn gut.
Racquets:
Ezone 100L 2021, Strung with TechniFibre Multifeel 16G at 55lbs
Babolat PD Team 2025, strung with Babolat Xcel 16G at 55lbs
Wilson Blade 100L v9, strung with Wilson Sensation 16G at 55lbs, 16x19
Head Speed MPL, strung with Head Velocity MLT 16G at 55lbs
The last one was 280gm unstrung, while all others were 285gm unstrung according to specs.
Impressions:
a) Ezone: K1 took to it like a fish to water. Strokes suddenly had a lot of power and topspin to boot. Defensive shots still carried over the net from bad positions, and the racquet felt great for everything. Serve may have been the only one where there wasn’t a noticeable surge in improvement. K2 like this racquet for the forehand but somehow it wasn’t turning out well with her backhands. She preferred more of a launch angle it seems. For the Adult, the Ezone had nice pop and a plush feeling, but felt underpowered when not loading up for a hit from the sweet spot.
b) PD Team: K1 liked this for most things, but wasn’t able to impart as much topspin as the EZone. Was her number 2 choice. K2 loved this from the start. She felt her serve had a lot more power, her strokes had depth, and she could hand in defensively. Benefits all around she felt. For the adult, this serve was great for the serve and volleys. Sweet spot hits were nice, but in other cases maybe not as stable.
c) Blade: K1 found it underpowered and so did K2. Both wanted more power from the racquet and this wasn’t giving it. They were able to impart more spin, but that was the only positive. For the adult, this felt the most fun. Lots of topspin, and the ball had good pop even without full swings. Slices worked great and precision of getting to spots chosen was good. Only negative was that the serve didn’t have good pop.
d) Speed MP: K1 gave up after one hit saying it felt too light and had no power. K2 played with it more amd got some good spin and strokes came good. Manueverability helped in many ways. She said it did everything well, but did not blow her away in anything. It was not useful from defensive scenarios and the serve felt weaker. For the adult, this felt nice to swing, had great spin and control, amd power was good when I caught it in the sweet spot. Off cemter hits were weak however, and slice didn’t have much going for it.
So there you have it. First playtest for a newish family to tennis. This only made us realize that we all needed to move to better racquets to keep developing and competing. Thanks to everyone for getting us thinking about the right things. If we could keep demoing, we may have added the Vcore 100L, Prince Twistpower X100, Dunlop FX 500 LS and Wilson Ultra to the list. Hoping for those opportunities in the next year.