New TWU Racquet Recommender Tool

[TW Professor]

Check out the new TWU Racquet Recommender Tool.

Starting with, and compared to, your current racquet, use sliders to choose more or less power, mobility, comfort, control or spin. The tool does the rest and recommends all current racquets that meet your criteria (if such a racquet exists). Click link.

Racquet Recommender Tool

 

[SPMoney]

That’s pretty cool. But it probably means I’m going to be adding more racquets to my collection in the near future. My wife is not going to like this.

 

[grhcan99]

I like this better than the Racquet Finder. But I do hope they keep the racquets in this tool up to date. Racquet Finder's flaw is that the racquets in there are not synched to TW's inventory.

 

[Kevo]

Neat tool. I tried to find a racquet similar to the Pure Control 95. I set everything baseline the same to see if there was any frame that was "as good" as the PC95 but had more of something. There wasn't anything in the tool's DB. There were only a handful of frames similar, a few Head frames and some Prince frames including several of the Prince Phantom frames which I would expect to see based on what I've read here on the forums.

 

[movdqa]

I put in the IG Prestige MP and it came back with the Pure Aero. I definitely didn't expect that. I'm not looking for new racquets as I already have plenty of racquets.

 

[TW Professor]

Neat tool. I tried to find a racquet similar to the Pure Control 95. I set everything baseline the same to see if there was any frame that was "as good" as the PC95 but had more of something. There wasn't anything in the tool's DB. There were only a handful of frames similar, a few Head frames and some Prince frames including several of the Prince Phantom frames which I would expect to see based on what I've read here on the forums.

Dragging all the sliders to the position of your current racquet is probably what most people will do. The expectation is that you will then see all the racquets that have "more" of all categories: power, comfort, mobility, control, and spin. Sometimes there will be a few, but most often not. That is because every increase in one property is in some sense a trade-off with another (or several). Consequently, every racquet has its own singular "baseline profile" (at least, almost so). The setting of each slider automatically eliminates all racquets with less of that slider's property. Moving each slider will eliminate racquets with more of something else you might desire. By the time you move the fourth of fifth slider, most of the racquets have already been disqualified as not having as much of something else that you wanted. This is true for every racquet. So, when we choose a racquet we have to optimize our trade-offs based on our priorities. The tool makes this doable.

Two basic slider strategies are these:

(1) Slider Strategy 1: Move the sliders one at a time in order of the importance of the property compared to the performance of your current racquet. Only move as many sliders as leaves you with enough racquets left that meets your first one, two, or three priorities. At that point, whatever the properties of your fourth and fifth choices will probably be just fine anyway. If there are still too many options, then move another slider.

(2) Slider Strategy 2: Move all the sliders to the position of your current racquet. Then, starting with your lowest priority property, lower that slider allowing more racquets to become visible. Then do the same for the next lowest priority. Then you can fine tune from there.

I suspect many other strategies will emerge as more people use the tool.

 

[TW Professor]

I put in the IG Prestige MP and it came back with the Pure Aero. I definitely didn't expect that. I'm not looking for new racquets as I already have plenty of racquets.

That is part of the fun of the tool. It will come up with racquets you never expected. There are more racquets out there that anyone can keep track of. At the same time, though some of these racquets will qualify based on your slider selections, some will also be complete outliers. That is where moving the upper slider handle comes in handy. Sometimes a radical maximum or minimum outlier can skew the range on any given property. So you might want to "squeeze" those out if they are not to your liking.

 

[movdqa]

That is part of the fun of the tool. It will come up with racquets you never expected. There are more racquets out there that anyone can keep track of. At the same time, though some of these racquets will qualify based on your slider selections, some will also be complete outliers. That is where moving the upper slider handle comes in handy. Sometimes a radical maximum or minimum outlier can skew the range on any given property. So you might want to "squeeze" those out if they are not to your liking.

My IG Prestiges are heavily customized too and there isn't really a way to account for that. They are XL with 15 grams of lead from 10 to 2.

I was expecting something more like an RF97 which, when customized to my weight settings, is similar to my Prestiges.

 

[Kevo]

Dragging all the sliders to the position of your current racquet is probably what most people will do. The expectation is that you will then see all the racquets that have "more" of all categories: power, comfort, mobility, control, and spin. Sometimes there will be a few, but most often not. That is because every increase in one property is in some sense a trade-off with another (or several).

That makes sense. I wasn't really expecting much to come up that was going to be better than the PC95, but was thinking maybe I would get lucky. My next attempt was to just open up the range a bit and see what it caught. It came up with the frames I have seen that are similar and nothing really unexpected unfortunately. But it does seem to do what it says on the tin quite nicely, so kudos for putting it together.

 

[Shroud]

Check out the new TWU Racquet Recommender Tool.

Starting with, and compared to, your current racquet, use sliders to choose more or less power, mobility, comfort, control or spin. The tool does the rest and recommends all current racquets that meet your criteria (if such a racquet exists). Click link.

Racquet Recommender Tool

I guess it worked.

I am probably an outlier but it was hard to find a starting racquet I was familar with. Went to wilson and no Profile, no Blx TWO, so I chose the 6.1 95 18x20.

Not sure what I was expecting but there was a graph of plots which was pretty meaningless (before I tweaked the control slider) with I guess racquets with more ball speed and different swing weights. That was weird. Like OK that racquet hits 2 mph faster than the current one. But what does that really mean from a practical standpoint. Its like when someone says that weight 20kg. I have no context for that because I measure in pounds. In tennis I never know the mph. Maybe if it listed something like base line, 2 ft out, 4 ft in, etc it would make more sense.

Moved the control slider up to 12% and it had 2 racquets. One was some head radical and the other was a wilson Triad 3. This was very strange. First off I am a WILSON guy. I would never pick a HEAD because its a HEAD and probably orange and probably soft. And a TRIAD? Isnt that the racquet that has no stiffness rating because it flexes so much or something? So I found it hard to believe the Triad would feel anything like the 6.1 or be more controlled (could be wrong on that). There were also terms I didnt know that werent defined that I could see. THought I knew stuff about racquets, but what is "sweetzone" and hittingweight?

Its probably me but the first thing I look at is stiffness. If a racket is not stiff enough its a non starter. So I put in a racquet and end up with a stick that AFAIK doesnt have a rated stiffness because of the tech it uses. So that was strange.

And I upped the control slider and its telling me that oversized racquets are going to give MORE control than a 95" 18x20 pattern. That doesnt seem right at all.

The intent is great I suppose if you have a racquet and want to get one that is more powerful for instance it will spit that out. But in the racquet I did it certainly didnt seem like I would be happy with any of those sticks, especially if I was looking for increased control.

And how do you quantify comfort. Its such an odd thing to think of a racquet as 25% more comfortable.

I kept playing and got some weird results. With the 6.1 95 (18x20) as the existing racquet I upped control to 9.1%- 14% more control. ALL of the listed racquets had between 1-2 mph more shot speed than the 6.1 95. How can one get 9+% more control with increased ball speed? And some of the racquets were spin racquets. How can you go from an 18X20 to a spin racquet and get more control?

It would be nice if there was a metric for launch angle. It seems to be asked about occasionally on these boards.

 

[ron schaap]

I guess it worked.

I am probably an outlier but it was hard to find a starting racquet I was familar with. Went to wilson and no Profile, no Blx TWO, so I chose the 6.1 95 18x20.

Not sure what I was expecting but there was a graph of plots which was pretty meaningless (before I tweaked the control slider) with I guess racquets with more ball speed and different swing weights. That was weird. Like OK that racquet hits 2 mph faster than the current one. But what does that really mean from a practical standpoint. Its like when someone says that weight 20kg. I have no context for that because I measure in pounds. In tennis I never know the mph. Maybe if it listed something like base line, 2 ft out, 4 ft in, etc it would make more sense.

Moved the control slider up to 12% and it had 2 racquets. One was some head radical and the other was a wilson Triad 3. This was very strange. First off I am a WILSON guy. I would never pick a HEAD because its a HEAD and probably orange and probably soft. And a TRIAD? Isnt that the racquet that has no stiffness rating because it flexes so much or something? So I found it hard to believe the Triad would feel anything like the 6.1 or be more controlled (could be wrong on that). There were also terms I didnt know that werent defined that I could see. THought I knew stuff about racquets, but what is "sweetzone" and hittingweight?

Its probably me but the first thing I look at is stiffness. If a racket is not stiff enough its a non starter. So I put in a racquet and end up with a stick that AFAIK doesnt have a rated stiffness because of the tech it uses. So that was strange.

And I upped the control slider and its telling me that oversized racquets are going to give MORE control than a 95" 18x20 pattern. That doesnt seem right at all.

The intent is great I suppose if you have a racquet and want to get one that is more powerful for instance it will spit that out. But in the racquet I did it certainly didnt seem like I would be happy with any of those sticks, especially if I was looking for increased control.

And how do you quantify comfort. Its such an odd thing to think of a racquet as 25% more comfortable.

I kept playing and got some weird results. With the 6.1 95 (18x20) as the existing racquet I upped control to 9.1%- 14% more control. ALL of the listed racquets had between 1-2 mph more shot speed than the 6.1 95. How can one get 9+% more control with increased ball speed? And some of the racquets were spin racquets. How can you go from an 18X20 to a spin racquet and get more control?

It would be nice if there was a metric for launch angle. It seems to be asked about occasionally on these boards.

So i got flabbergasted too using this tool. It tells me that a very open stringpatterned Wilson had a lot less spinpotential than my 16x20 patterned racquet. The most weird i found if you dont use those sliders. Than the tool gives you the same subset of 235 racquets, no matter with what racquet you started.
I did notice also that the 104 blade Wilson has a high power level, which seems resonable to me.

 

[jacob22]

That is part of the fun of the tool. It will come up with racquets you never expected. There are more racquets out there that anyone can keep track of. At the same time, though some of these racquets will qualify based on your slider selections, some will also be complete outliers. That is where moving the upper slider handle comes in handy. Sometimes a radical maximum or minimum outlier can skew the range on any given property. So you might want to "squeeze" those out if they are not to your liking.

You're right. I put in the Pure Strike that I've been using most in the past year and got back the Pro Kennex Ki Q+ Tour Pro(325g). Never even heard of it(or know how to pronouce it). Gonna have to try it at the last day of the IW demo court.

 

[Shroud]

So i got flabbergasted too using this tool. It tells me that a very open stringpatterned Wilson had a lot less spinpotential than my 16x20 patterned racquet. The most weird i found if you dont use those sliders. Than the tool gives you the same subset of 235 racquets, no matter with what racquet you started.
I did notice also that the 104 blade Wilson has a high power level, which seems resonable to me.

ITs probably good if you want to get people to demo and demo and demo . Sorry I am a cynic...

 

[TW Professor]

I guess it worked.

I am probably an outlier but it was hard to find a starting racquet I was familar with. Went to wilson and no Profile, no Blx TWO, so I chose the 6.1 95 18x20.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll answer many of your questions in separate posts below. Ultimately any tool becomes more useful as we learn to use it and adapt it to our needs. TWU has many tools that used in tandem can be of great help in choosing racquets. Each is aimed at different players looking for different things. The tools all grow out of the TWU experiments (found on the dropdown menu at TWU) that are designed to discover the cause and effect relationships of altering any racquet property or input variable of a particular shot.

The starting point for the tool is your current racquet. In most instances, a person is looking for a new racquet in order to improve performance in some important respect. The racquets in the database are those that we have tested since 2007. It's not every racquet, but it is probably the largest database of statically and dynamically measured performance properties available. Your modified Profile is obviously a very special case that is off the charts compared to racquets actually on the market. However, with the TWU Customization Tool, you could customize many racquets recommended by the tool to play similarly to your modified Profile.

 

[TW Professor]

Not sure what I was expecting but there was a graph of plots which was pretty meaningless (before I tweaked the control slider) with I guess racquets with more ball speed and different swing weights. That was weird. Like OK that racquet hits 2 mph faster than the current one. But what does that really mean from a practical standpoint. Its like when someone says that weight 20kg. I have no context for that because I measure in pounds. In tennis I never know the mph. Maybe if it listed something like base line, 2 ft out, 4 ft in, etc it would make more sense.

The graph that appears could have been of any two performance variables. Swingweight and ball speed were chosen because swingweight is the most important racquet property determining performance (at least of the easily measurable properties), and ball speed (power) is the property that generates the most interest to players and consumers. When you say “this racquet is powerful” you are making a judgement on shot speed. The tool is eliminating the guess and simply telling you the speed. Players use shot distance (“2 ft out or 4 ft in”) as a substitute for speed, but that is risky because distance depends more on launch angle than on speed. Fortunately TWU has other tools that tell you speed, angle, distance, net clearance, etc., such as "The Shot Trajectory" and "Racquet Performance Analysis" tools.

But, as an aside, your experience with the swingweight graph points out the major problem at large with racquet selection. Players have not been sufficiently educated as to the existence, meaning, and significance of swingweight. Many retailers, manufacturers and websites don’t even list it, nor do they list equally important properties of twistweight or hittingweight or ACOR (discussed below).

In the end for the purpose of this tool, the graph is there simply as a visual device to show the racquets remaining as you move the sliders. You can click on any of the dots in the graph to see the specs.

 

[TW Professor]

Moved the control slider up to 12% and it had 2 racquets. One was some head radical and the other was a wilson Triad 3. This was very strange. First off I am a WILSON guy. I would never pick a HEAD because its a HEAD and probably orange and probably soft. And a TRIAD? Isnt that the racquet that has no stiffness rating because it flexes so much or something? So I found it hard to believe the Triad would feel anything like the 6.1 or be more controlled (could be wrong on that). There were also terms I didnt know that werent defined that I could see. THought I knew stuff about racquets, but what is "sweetzone" and hittingweight?

The name of the tool is "Recommender". It does not claim that a racquet will be of your liking, only that it qualifies as a possibility given your preferences. The racquets that are recommended will not all be similar, unless you have moved the sliders into narrow ranges to make them so. Outlier racquets are possible at the very top and bottom of the sliders. You can eliminate those from your choices by moving both the top and bottom sliders. Most racquets don’t live at the extremes. It is recommended that you don’t move the sliders to far from the green line representing your current racquet. That way you still have the outliers in your selection but then you have more freedom in optimizing your selection with the other sliders.

The terms like "hittingweight" and "sweet zone" are all defined on the results page if you click on "explanations" in the upper left corner. Also, the "instructions" link in the right corner has some helpful information. There are also separate hittingweight and sweet zone tools on TWU, as well as many others. The most powerful tool of all is the “Racquet Performance Analysis Tool”. That tool alone tells you how every racquet behaves for power, power zone, swing speed, spin, plow through, show speed, launch angle, shot distance, and flight time. It also allows filtering by brand, spec, impact location, and swing effort. It also finds similar racquets and shows the effects of customization. All in one tool!

 

[TW Professor]

ts probably me but the first thing I look at is stiffness. If a racket is not stiff enough its a non starter. So I put in a racquet and end up with a stick that AFAIK doesnt have a rated stiffness because of the tech it uses. So that was strange.

A player who is not accomplished and does not know their way around a racquet does not start with stiffness. In fact they don't start with any "spec" because they are all meaningless by themselves with no experiential performance context. They do understand the terms power, control, comfort, and maneuverability, however. And at the end of the day, any given spec (weight, balance, swingweght, headsize, etc.) is just a stand-in word indicating what performance variable (i.e., the power, control, comfort, etc.) might be influenced by it. In your case, you like a stiff racquet because it gives you some desired performance or feel. But any spec by itself does not determine a performance. Any given spec can cancel or augment the effects of another. The one exception is ACOR (apparent coefficient of restitution). We call that by a more friendly name of “power potential”. The power potential number is a completely objective, measured property of each location on the racquet face. It is the net performance result of ALL specs. Power potential measures the percent of impact speed left after bouncing from the racquet and losing energy in racquet twisting, bending, rotating, translating, vibration, ball deformation, friction, heat, sound, etc. In other words, it measures the combined effect of stiffness, weight, balance, thickness, head size, swing weight, twist weight, hitting weight, impact location, stringbed properties, etc. The TWU Power Potential Tool is located here. Also, there is a stiffness tool too. It is called the “Vibration Frequency Tool.” Vibration is a measure of stiffness. The tool is sortable by vibration frequency, flex, weight and brand.

 

[TW Professor]

And I upped the control slider and its telling me that oversized racquets are going to give MORE control than a 95" 18x20 pattern. That doesnt seem right at all.

The intent is great I suppose if you have a racquet and want to get one that is more powerful for instance it will spit that out. But in the racquet I did it certainly didnt seem like I would be happy with any of those sticks, especially if I was looking for increased control.

The Racquet Recommender tool has to be flexible. It does not know if any one person of any given ability and style will experience more control or not from a racquet. The tool simply says that the racquet, independent of the given player, has properties that lead to more control for the most people. A 18x20 pattern is only one component of control. But if the racquet has a low twistweight, swingweight or small sweet zone (power zone), then it will only have control if hit in the center or along the long axis. Off-center it will have unpredictable launch angle, spin, and power. The tool has to take all these things into consideration. The recommendations will cover a wide range of player skills and preferences. If a player knows his/her preference, then one can simply choose from the recommended racquets by clicking on the big performance category box on the result page to see the specs of each racquet. If you want to compare to racquets side by side in specs, you can go to the “Compare Racquets Tool” or if you want to find similar racquets go to the "Similar Racquets Tool", and if you want to compare to racquets performance you can go to the “Shot Trajectory Tool”. All TWU tools are different ways of looking at the same information.

 

[TW Professor]

And how do you quantify comfort. Its such an odd thing to think of a racquet as 25% more comfortable.

I kept playing and got some weird results. With the 6.1 95 (18x20) as the existing racquet I upped control to 9.1%- 14% more control. ALL of the listed racquets had between 1-2 mph more shot speed than the 6.1 95. How can one get 9+% more control with increased ball speed? And some of the racquets were spin racquets. How can you go from an 18X20 to a spin racquet and get more control?

There is no such thing as a comfort or control unit, such as grams or ounces for weight. But we can create algorithms that correlate measurable properties to comfort or control. The numbers that a algorithm spits out don't mean anything in themselves except as they compare to each other, hence the percentage comparison used by the tool — i.e., this has more than that. So you are not really going to get, say, 14% more control from a racquet. You simply know that this racquet has more control features built into it than this other racquet.

Power and control often go hand-in-hand. Both depend in part on the hittingweight at the impact location ("hittingweight" is the effective mass at the impact location). A higher hittingweight will twist, rotate, and translate less than a lower one. Therefore, the rebound will be faster and the launch angle will be truer both vertically and horizontally. This is true of the racquet by itself. However, if the player is not skilled or strong enough to have the racquet in position to hit, then both power and control will suffer. Having the racquet with the "most" of any characteristic is not necessarily the best for any given person. That is why starting with your present racquet as the baseline is so important. Based on your experience you can then make "more" or "less" type judgements.

 

[TW Professor]

It would be nice if there was a metric for launch angle. It seems to be asked about occasionally on these boards.

There is! The Racquet Performance Analysis Tool. Click "Angle" on the menu across the bottom and it will show the graph of launch angle vs swingweight.

 

[TW Professor]

So i got flabbergasted too using this tool. It tells me that a very open stringpatterned Wilson had a lot less spinpotential than my 16x20 patterned racquet. The most weird i found if you dont use those sliders. Than the tool gives you the same subset of 235 racquets, no matter with what racquet you started.
I did notice also that the 104 blade Wilson has a high power level, which seems resonable to me.

Until you move the sliders all 235 racquets will be shown because you have not deselected any yet by moving the sliders. The sliders deselect compared to your current racquet.

Spin potential depends on the direct and indirect net result of many variables such as spinweight (same concept as swingweight but in the vertical plane), frame thickness and strinbed width opposite the hitting location, string pattern, racquet head speed (given the spinweight), hitting location, hittingweight, headsize, and, of course, string material which the tool does not consider. That being the case, the tool might recommend racquets you wouldn't consider even if they technically have greater spin potential because they would adversely affect other parts of your game. But that may not be true for someone else. That's why demoing is important.

The tool will "flabbergast" against one's expectations. That's a good thing.

 

[TennisHound]

It'd be cool if there was some way to add a "Stability" spectrum to measure from.

 

[Kalin]

Great tool!!

I know you will be inundated with suggestions what to add onto the tool until it becomes the tennis version of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle but here's one from me:

Could there be a slider/switch for length too? I put my PDR+ to see what I get and it shows quite a few standard-length sticks. The extended length of the PDR+ is integral to the way it plays, IMO. And yes, I am aware that, sadly, there's very few extended racquets nowadays

 

[sophiaK]

Nice tool, gives me a fresh look on a certain brand and model.

 

[ron schaap]

I dont know if others are as critical as i, but in step 1 of the tool you start with around 1025 racquets, that are obvious measured by TWU. However after step 2 you get always the same subset of available and non available racquets. Thats strange because you expect to see only racquets that are available. The most weird is that the Head microgel radical OS is almost always in the selection. All its properties appearantly are better than ones own racquet. But if you look carefully at the properties of that particular racquet in an other tool of TWU, than it appears to have quite normal properties. Certainly not particular powerfull. So either the measurements of TWau have changed over time or something isnt right about it.

 

[Shroud]

The name of the tool is "Recommender". It does not claim that a racquet will be of your liking, only that it qualifies as a possibility given your preferences. The racquets that are recommended will not all be similar, unless you have moved the sliders into narrow ranges to make them so. Outlier racquets are possible at the very top and bottom of the sliders. You can eliminate those from your choices by moving both the top and bottom sliders. Most racquets don’t live at the extremes. It is recommended that you don’t move the sliders to far from the green line representing your current racquet. That way you still have the outliers in your selection but then you have more freedom in optimizing your selection with the other sliders.

The terms like "hittingweight" and "sweet zone" are all defined on the results page if you click on "explanations" in the upper left corner. Also, the "instructions" link in the right corner has some helpful information. There are also separate hittingweight and sweet zone tools on TWU, as well as many others. The most powerful tool of all is the “Racquet Performance Analysis Tool”. That tool alone tells you how every racquet behaves for power, power zone, swing speed, spin, plow through, show speed, launch angle, shot distance, and flight time. It also allows filtering by brand, spec, impact location, and swing effort. It also finds similar racquets and shows the effects of customization. All in one tool!

Was jazzed to see the Racquet performance Analysis Tool...sadly no racquets in there for Shroud. Only one I have used for any extended period of time was the hammer 5.3 stretch. Cool tool though if you have a stick that is in there.

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I think at the end of the day I am just an outlier and the market doesnt make a stock racquet that would work for me and so I need to customize, so no tool is going to work well for me. I was just a bit shocked at what it was suggesting. Like no way I would ever pick such racquets to demo and if I did I would seriously question why I was trying such a stick, and consequently the whole demo process would be called into question.

Its like driving an SUV and the online car tool says to go check out a compact....

 

[TW Professor]

I dont know if others are as critical as i, but in step 1 of the tool you start with around 1025 racquets, that are obvious measured by TWU. However after step 2 you get always the same subset of available and non available racquets. Thats strange because you expect to see only racquets that are available. The most weird is that the Head microgel radical OS is almost always in the selection. All its properties appearantly are better than ones own racquet. But if you look carefully at the properties of that particular racquet in an other tool of TWU, than it appears to have quite normal properties. Certainly not particular powerfull. So either the measurements of TWau have changed over time or something isnt right about it.

Step 1 shows all the racquets we have tested since 2007. In step 2, all racquets are still shown with the brand you picked in step 1 highlighted. In step 3, the racquets shown are only the racquet you chose in step 2 and all the current racquets on the market that we have tested. All the discontinued racquets that TW no longer sells have been eliminated. The number of current racquets is presently 235, but that will change as more are added and others are discontinued. The racquet you choose in step 2 has nothing to do with this number. The racquet you choose is shown as the green line in each slider, and the position of that line does change for each racquet chosen in step 2.

As you move the sliders, the number of current TW racquets that match your preference decreases. So, for example, say power and control are your two most important performances. If power is your first priority, perhaps you move the slider until only 30 racquets remain. All 30 will have more power than your present racquet, but at the same time you will be eliminating racquets that may have more control than your present racquet. Then, given the 30 more powerful racquets remaining, you move the control slider to show only those racquets with both more power and control than your racquet. It is possible, however, that depending on how extreme you move the first slider, you could eliminate all racquets possessing your second choice of control. That's how all choices are, "you can have the most of this, but none of that, or you can have some of this and some of that." That's why you probably don't want to eliminate too many with any given slider. In fact, one strategy might be to first take the power slider to the green line representing your present racquet. Then every racquet remaining has more power than yours. Then move the control slider. And don't forget the top slider if you find outliers to your desires. This strategy will work with any number and order of sliders.

Don't forget to click the results boxes on the results page to see all the properties that are involved in determining each slider result. These all add up to the overall potential of the racquet to deliver a given property. But any given player with any given racquet may or may not realize that potential depending on their ability, style and specific adaptation to changes in particular properties.

 

[Michaeldo88]

Many incorrect informations such as wilson burn 95 and burn 95cv and ultra 95 are all the same frame with thickness 22 but the tool show burn 95 thickness 24 > burn 95cv and ultra 95 are 23???

 

[bigNC]

No hotmelt 200g? For shame. Lol. Neat tool though!

 

[bleno567]

Very cool tool. I will say if there's one spec I first check, it's beam thickness. I've never had a thick beamed racquet that felt good and didn't cause me to mishit frequently.

 

[BounceHitBounceHit]

The name of the tool is "Recommender". It does not claim that a racquet will be of your liking, only that it qualifies as a possibility given your preferences. The racquets that are recommended will not all be similar, unless you have moved the sliders into narrow ranges to make them so. Outlier racquets are possible at the very top and bottom of the sliders. You can eliminate those from your choices by moving both the top and bottom sliders. Most racquets don’t live at the extremes. It is recommended that you don’t move the sliders to far from the green line representing your current racquet. That way you still have the outliers in your selection but then you have more freedom in optimizing your selection with the other sliders.

The terms like "hittingweight" and "sweet zone" are all defined on the results page if you click on "explanations" in the upper left corner. Also, the "instructions" link in the right corner has some helpful information. There are also separate hittingweight and sweet zone tools on TWU, as well as many others. The most powerful tool of all is the “Racquet Performance Analysis Tool”. That tool alone tells you how every racquet behaves for power, power zone, swing speed, spin, plow through, show speed, launch angle, shot distance, and flight time. It also allows filtering by brand, spec, impact location, and swing effort. It also finds similar racquets and shows the effects of customization. All in one tool!

Do you do on court analysis with individual players who come visit The MotherShip in SLO? If so, can I book time with you? And oh, if you could please arrange for Bethanie-Matek Sands to serve as hitting partner? [emoji56][emoji3][emoji122]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Xpherex]

It would be nice if there was a metric for launch angle. It seems to be asked about occasionally on these boards.

Yeah I also support the idea. I personally prefer a high launch angle. I don't understand the spin, I watched videos of you to compare the spin potential racquets, but I didn't find any difference, on average it is about the same.
Also I would like to know how tight is the string-bed, I do brake a lot of strings so for me it is important to find a tight as possible and a higher launch angle tennis racquet. I cannot demo where I live so I always have to guess.

 

[speedysteve]

Interesting, but it seems to just look at comfort as a RA number. The lower the RA the higher the comfort.
You don't take into consideration any comfort tech like PK or Volkl use for example;
I find a Volkl V1 Pro more comfortable than a Prince EXO3 tour 100 but your result suggests otherwise.

 

[Unforgiven79]

Ended up with Babolat Pure Aero Lite ... sorry, that's a type of racquet I would play with only if the only survivor of atomic aftermath.

 

[Grinch]

I put in the IG Prestige MP and it came back with the Pure Aero. I definitely didn't expect that. I'm not looking for new racquets as I already have plenty of racquets.

Weird. I put in Prince EXO3 Tour 100 and it recommended Bab Pure Aero also. It’s the same head size but I can’t think of any racket more different than the EXO3 in terms of power, flex, comfort, control, weight/balance. Then I entered PS97RF and wa la ... it recommend the Pure Aero again. Maybe the Babolat IT department hacked the TW site because Pure Aero sales aren’t increasing at their expected 30% per year and market share is not yet at the desired 80% of the entire racket market.

 

[Grinch]

Step 1 shows all the racquets we have tested since 2007. In step 2, all racquets are still shown with the brand you picked in step 1 highlighted. In step 3, the racquets shown are only the racquet you chose in step 2 and all the current racquets on the market that we have tested. All the discontinued racquets that TW no longer sells have been eliminated. The number of current racquets is presently 235, but that will change as more are added and others are discontinued. The racquet you choose in step 2 has nothing to do with this number. The racquet you choose is shown as the green line in each slider, and the position of that line does change for each racquet chosen in step 2.

As you move the sliders, the number of current TW racquets that match your preference decreases. So, for example, say power and control are your two most important performances. If power is your first priority, perhaps you move the slider until only 30 racquets remain. All 30 will have more power than your present racquet, but at the same time you will be eliminating racquets that may have more control than your present racquet. Then, given the 30 more powerful racquets remaining, you move the control slider to show only those racquets with both more power and control than your racquet. It is possible, however, that depending on how extreme you move the first slider, you could eliminate all racquets possessing your second choice of control. That's how all choices are, "you can have the most of this, but none of that, or you can have some of this and some of that." That's why you probably don't want to eliminate too many with any given slider. In fact, one strategy might be to first take the power slider to the green line representing your present racquet. Then every racquet remaining has more power than yours. Then move the control slider. And don't forget the top slider if you find outliers to your desires. This strategy will work with any number and order of sliders.

Don't forget to click the results boxes on the results page to see all the properties that are involved in determining each slider result. These all add up to the overall potential of the racquet to deliver a given property. But any given player with any given racquet may or may not realize that potential depending on their ability, style and specific adaptation to changes in particular properties.

So do we have to move ALL the sliders just a hair in order to get a recommendation that comes closest to our current racket that we entered?

 

[alexmcnab]

How about adding Angell rackets?

 

[lwto]

All it comes up with is Babolat Aero Pro

 

[Karma Tennis]

Ended up with Babolat Pure Aero Lite ... sorry, that's a type of racquet I would play with only if the only survivor of atomic aftermath.

You would have no choice. Babolat racquets would be the only racquets to survive such a catastrophe.

 

[Miki 1234]

Check out the new TWU Racquet Recommender Tool.

Starting with, and compared to, your current racquet, use sliders to choose more or less power, mobility, comfort, control or spin. The tool does the rest and recommends all current racquets that meet your criteria (if such a racquet exists). Click link.

Racquet Recommender Tool

How accurate are these stats , looks great btw

 

[Thiem's 1HB]

Check out the new TWU Racquet Recommender Tool.

Starting with, and compared to, your current racquet, use sliders to choose more or less power, mobility, comfort, control or spin. The tool does the rest and recommends all current racquets that meet your criteria (if such a racquet exists). Click link.

Racquet Recommender Tool

Need an option for stability/twist weight, that sort of thing.....

 

[Rafaboy]

absolutely useless

 

[CosmosMpower]

absolutely useless

+1 how about update the string comparison database with some new strings instead

 

[Unforgiven79]

That’s pretty cool. But it probably means I’m going to be adding more racquets to my collection in the near future. My wife is not going to like this.

I guess that was exacty TW's purpose... (not your wife's disliking, of course)

 

[anarosevoli]

Main problem is the data in the system. I searched for Vcore SV 100, which is basically a spin racquet, but its value for spin in the system is so ridiculously low that only completely different racquets are being found. I guess for more than 50% of the racquets the value for at least one slider is wrong. If only one slider is wrong it does not lead to minor errors but gives completely different results. In the Vcore case the results are worse than picking a random racquet would be.
Pure Aero 2019 has also ridiculously low value for spin!
Now I thought that the slider was completely inverted, but that's not the case, the Steam 99s has the correct (very high) value for spin.

 

[Elevenis]

Haha, try the Brand New TWU Racquet Tool - sponsored by Babolat.

 

[anarosevoli]

Main problem is the data in the system. I searched for Vcore SV 100, which is basically a spin racquet, but its value for spin in the system is so ridiculously low that only completely different racquets are being found. I guess for more than 50% of the racquets the value for at least one slider is wrong. If only one slider is wrong it does not lead to minor errors but gives completely different results. In the Vcore case the results are worse than picking a random racquet would be.
Pure Aero 2019 has also ridiculously low value for spin!
Now I thought that the slider was completely inverted, but that's not the case, the Steam 99s has the correct (very high) value for spin.

Still wrong after 3 months.
According to this a Dunlop Srixon Revo CX Tour (18x20, 95" head) has 5,6 % more spin than Pure Aero 2019.
This is obviously run by a person who never held a racquet in his hand (EVERYBODY knows that a Pure Aero is a spin racquet!),.

 

[bank5]

Neat tool. I too am wondering how accurate the spin metric is. How does 5% less spin translate and how is it measured?
I have a Prince 03 Tour MP and according to the tool it provides more spin than all of the 294 racquets it compares. I'm happy with the racquet so guess I'll stick with it

 

[DeathStrike]

Hello this is a great tool however does not have my previous one Babolat VS NCT Tour, I suppose it is a long shot to get that in there somehow

 

[tenstudent]

It doesn't have any Artengo rackets?