I usually play with the Gravity Pro from 2023 (Auxetic I) and, since my wife really enjoyed picking one of my two racquets out of my bag to use on court, I recommended that she move to a Gravity Tour 2025 (Auxetic II) some time early this year on the basis that it would give her a compromise between the power she appreciated in her ancient Babolat and the feeling of my Gravity sticks that appealed to her. We couldn't find anywhere with any to test but she did switch, anyway.
I string all our racquets the same.
She needed an overgrip and used one of mine because we'd run out of her choice, earlier this week, and, yesterday, the inevitable happened: I grabbed her racquet (Tour '25) instead of mine (Pro '23) off the bench at the change of ends during a set against one of our better mutual friends.
Sunny. Dry. Uncomfortably cold. Moist clay. End-of-season sand conditions (extraordinarily thin). Me to serve: 1 - 2.
I honestly didn't notice that I had the wrong racquet until it was 40:30 and I looked at what was in my hand.
I did the double-take because of how much better the Tour 2025 served compared to the Pro 2023. That whole game, I was thinking: "Hell, my serve is *in*, today!?" Of course, my opponent played competitively as a junior and my serve – even when in – isn't my best weapon so it wasn't having that much of an effect on the exchanges but one knows when one is striking The Spot with the spin and velocity and curve that their mind wants to produce and, Yes! I Was!
The spin and power of the 98-inch Tour were very, very nice indeed and they contributed to a clear advantage on serve while being as great in rallies as one could expect.
The differences in launch angle, also mentioned up-thread, is also very apparent. The launch-angle on the Graivity Pro ('23) is admittedly rubbish where as the Tour ('25) felt normal if not extremely high – being used to the Pro, this was just a matter of callibration but it reminded me how difficult it was to fall in love with the older Pro in the first place.
In hindsight, I was aware of all of these differences before I noticed the racquet mistake which explained them but they had been obscured because of the sand conditions which were making the spin and bounces "all wierd" for the whole session: some balls where biting in and pinging off as if the spin you could see in the air was 200% effective and others where just sort of skidding and reflecting. Reading the bounce was challenging and so transmitting spin to the ball in return felt pretty stochastic. Uncertain spin transmission meant that balls where sometimes 'floaty' when they should have dropped into the court so we were playing conservatively: higher above the net, a little slower, longer if possible but not ridiculously on the limit.
That game went to deuce and stayed there for a while but I held serve and went on to break convincingly in the next and took the set (6 - 4), playing all the remaining games with my own racquets because, although the Tour ('25) was great, and good to me, I must say that I prefer the control that the Pro ('23) offers to the higher launch angle and better serves, spin and power of the former – I'm used to the control and, in the uncertain conditions, trusting my racquet was also particularly important.
I absolutely could get used to the Tour, though. It would take a while to build complete trust but I doubt it would take even half as long as it did for me to learn to play well with the Pro. Having tried it, I must say I'd love to try the new Auxetic II version of the Pro and see how that feels.
Importantly: none of the Head Gravity racquets I have ever tried (including these two and just about the whole 2023 line-up) have ever created pain in my right wrist. Some racquets do punish that joint, for me, and not feeling pain was part of the reason I opted for the Pro '23, myself.
