bertrevert said:
Hey travlerajm your research is very valuable - the objective, sure, but also your process as well. For instance, where you tweak the sweetspot with lead and then balance that up in the handle - instructive stuff!
Safin often goes for the drop volley. He doesn't try to penetrate to a corner but rather just tries an awkward (muffed) dink over the net. Horrible to watch. Perhaps his setup explains something of that.
Can you write a bit more on how the groundstrokes felt? That's significant in his punishing power-hitting game.
The groundstrokes felt nice if I timed it right. But this setup just didn't feel balanced to me. I think part of the problem is that Safin's platform model starts out a lot lighter than mine, allowing him to distribute the weight better in the hoop. Having so much weight in the top half of the hoop, with no added weight in the bottom half made for an unpredictable ball response. The other problem was that it felt like my groundstrokes were a bit overpowered - IMO, it's worse to have an overpowered frame than an underpowered one. Safin's frame is probably more flexible (with a stiffness in the 50s), which would make his racquet less powerful for much better depth control. With this racquet, I just didn't feel like I knew exactly what was going to happen when the ball left my strings. Usually, it's easy to tell when a setup is "well-balanced," as a well-balanced setup usually allows me to pick it up and hit with pinpoint control right from the first hit. This was not one of those setups. For my next setup, I'm planning to use the weight in more of a 3 and 9 configuration, somewhere in the neighborhood of 360 swingweight, and 12.5 oz., because I've found I can get a more consistent stringbed response, and I like the feel at net of a high-twistweight frame. I'll probably use about 15g on the sides of the hoop of my NXG, which is less than my "doubles specialist" setup, but more than the 10g of my regular setup I used this summer.
But I'll reitierate that this "Safin" setup felt really sweet on serves. All of my favorite serving racquets over the years, including the stock racquet I played with for almost a decade in my 20's, had one thing in common:
High swingweight, but relatively low static weight.
The stock racquet I used for a long time was the Wilson Prostaff 4.7 EB Stretch 115".
It was 28" long, 68 RDC, and only 10.5 oz. But it's swingweight was 346 (very high for a stock racquet). I really loved that racquet for serves. Not that many people knew about that racquet, but it had almost cult status with those of us who used it. It's only downside was it's lightness, which made it less than ideal for volleys and returning heavy serves.
The key is that weight added to the hoop of the racquet adds proportionately more power on the serve than it does on the groundstrokes. This is a good thing, because depth control is necessary on groundstrokes, but not on the serve because you are hitting downward into the court. If too much weight is in the handle, it slows down the acceleration of your elbow too much, reducing the explosiveness of your serve. This is probably the reason that the pros who use very heavy racquets (like Dent and Sampras) use frames that are less HL than you would expect.
