Prince Synergy Lite Oversize - Resurrecting my first racquet!

[Trip]

I grew up learning tennis in the late 80's / early 90's, and was lucky enough to be gifted my first racquet in the form of a Prince Synergy Lite Oversize at the age of about 10 (I believe it came out in 1992 or 1993). I remember it being quite head-heavy and tough to wield, and as such, I've always wanted to see what it would be like to try and play with one again. With my original having been likely "lost" in my parents attic some time ago, I managed to get a clean one off The Bay not too long ago and finally managed to clean it and string it up! Here are some photos:

Not entirely surprising, the racquet came with the original string job still in place and hardly any of the paint worn off the strings, so it didn't see much use. Highlights of this frame are: the very early-90's paint job (for as period-piece as it is, it's actually quite beautiful I think, and GLOSSY!), the very wide tapering CTS beam (28mm at the tip I believe?!), a "lite" static weight while also being very head-heavy with a 350+ swing weight (!!!), and of course, last but not least, the "P Key" buttcap -- a non-removeable cap with a key hole in the middle of the "P" logo, and an accompanying "P Key", which you can insert into the hole in the "P", turn 180-degrees, then remove, leaving a pass-through slot open, out of which you can empty any liquid polymer crystals that may have come loose during play -- talk about a gimmick! Hah! (I do actually remember a few loose crystals jiggling around in my original racquet, and I could never quite get that pesky P Key to work properly when I tried it as a kid... go figure!).

Here were the original specs (talk about a head-heavy sledge hammer!):
- Original Strung Weight (with original Prince Softsorb Base Grip): 314.3g
- Original Strung Swing Weight: 350
- Strung Balance: 4pts head-heavy
- Unstrung Balance (after cutting out the strings): 1.5pts head-heavy

In order to make this frame at least somewhat playable, I added about 14.5g lead to where the narrowest taper-end of the butt cap meets the pallet, as well as 2.5g of electrical tape to smooth that over, so about 17g in total at that location. I also replaced the worn our original Prince grip with a Yonex leather grip (25.5g) plus one Gamma Supreme Overgrip (~7g). In total, these adjustments added about 22-23g of counterbalance weight in the most (only) feasible way, as, again, the butt cap is non-removeable (and even if it was, the hairpin is entirely filled with liquid crystal polymer). This made the racquet more head-light and more polarized, both of which I hope will make the racquet much more playable, including adding more loop or "curl" to groundstrokes.

After all the pre-stringing prep, I now had the following unstrung specs:
- Unstrung Weight: 317g
- Unstrung Balance: 32.7cm (5pts head-light)
- Unstrung Swing Weight: 322
- Unstrung Twist Weight: 15.3

As for stringing it up, I know frames like this were built for natural or synthetic gut, but I decided to string it up with a soft poly, YTEX Square-X (1.25) at 55/53, to really test what, if any, modern merits it may have. So, strung specs:
- Strung Weight: 336g
- Strung Balance: 33.7cm (2pts head-light)
- Strung Swing Weight: 352
- Strung Twist Weight: 17.1

Clearly, this thing will be a beast to try and play with -- makes me feel better about myself trying to wield it at such a young age!

I hope this post was of some entertainment and/or informational value to some! I'll be swinging this thing tomorrow with a friend, and will report back general findings from there!

 

[TennisHound]

I grew up learning tennis in the late 80's / early 90's, and was lucky enough to be gifted my first racquet in the form of a Prince Synergy Lite Oversize at the age of about 10 (I believe it came out in 1992 or 1993). I remember it being quite head-heavy and tough to wield, and as such, I've always wanted to see what it would be like to try and play with one again. With my original having been likely "lost" in my parents attic some time ago, I managed to get a clean one off The Bay not too long ago and finally managed to clean it up and string it up tonight! Here are some photos:

Not entirely surprising, the racquet came with the original string job still in place and hardly any of the paint worn off the strings, so it didn't see much use. Highlights of this frame are: the very early-90's paint job (for as period-piece as it is, it's actually quite beautiful I think, and GLOSSY!), the very wide tapering CTS beam (28mm at the tip I believe?!), a "lite" static weight while also being very head-heavy with a 350+ swing weight (!!!), and of course, last but not least, the "P Key" buttcap -- a non-removeable cap with a key hole in the middle of the "P" logo, and an accompanying "P Key", which you can insert into the hole in the "P", turn 180-degrees, then remove, leaving a pass-through slot open, out of which you can empty any liquid polymer crystals that may have come loose during play -- talk about a gimmick! Hah! (I do actually remember a few loose crystals jiggling around in my original racquet, and I could never quite get that pesky P Key to work properly when I tried it as a kid... go figure!).

Here were the original specs (talk about a head-heavy sledge hammer!):
- Original Strung Weight (with original Prince Softsorb Base Grip): 314.3g
- Original Strung Swing Weight: 350
- Strung Balance: 4pts head-heavy
- Unstrung Balance (after cutting out the strings): 1.5pts head-heavy

In order to make this frame at least somewhat playable, I added ~15g lead to where the top edge of the butt cap tapers down to the pallet, as well as ~2g of electrical tape to smooth that over, so about 17g altogether. I replaced the worn our original Prince grip with a Yonex leather grip (25.5g) plus one Gamma Supreme Overgrip (~7g), so make the entire handle-end as weighted up as was reasonably possible. This was one of those Prince models that came with a non-removeable butt cap,

After all the pre-stringing prep, I now had the following unstrung specs:
- Unstrung Weight: 317g
- Unstrung Balance: 32.7cm (5pts head-light)
- Unstrung Swing Weight: 322
- Unstrung Twist Weight: 15.3

As for stringing it up, I know frames like this were built for natural or synthetic gut, but I decided to string it up with a soft poly, YTEX Square-X (1.25) at 55/53, to really test what, if any, modern merits it may have. So, strung specs:
- Strung Weight: 336g
- Strung Balance: 33.7cm (2pts head-light)
- Strung Swing Weight: 352
- Strung Twist Weight: 17.1

Clearly, this thing will be a beast to try and play with -- makes me feel better about myself trying to wield it at such a young age!

I hope this post was of some entertainment and/or informational value to some! I'll be swinging this thing tomorrow with a friend, and will report back general findings from there!

Its amazing how we used such heavy racquets at a young age without knowing they were heavy.

 

[Trip]

Indeed! It really puts a lot of things into perspective. Here I've been hemming and hawing over committing to the VCore Pro 97D as I enter my 40's, yet I was happily playing with the Synergy Lite OS at 10 -- LOL! How things have changed...

As a side note, in the search for this frame, I also (accidentally) picked up a Synergy Lite Midplus, Carlos Moya's former racquet. That one feels even more head-heavy; I haven't had a chance to measure the swing weight or balance, but will do so later and post and update!

 

[Trip]

So, an update: I hit with it for about 10 minutes during a warmup and first game of a casual singles set, then bagged it. Groundstroke plow-through was outstanding, control was decent, but serves were a bit of a bear, twist weight was too high and general finesse was a problem. At only 2 points head-light and 17.1 twist weight, I knew that I needed to add more centerline mass on the handle to make it more head-light and reduce relative lateral weight.

Customization, Phase 2 -- I removed over grip, base grip and electrical tape, then added 15.5g more lead (31 inches of 1/4", .5g/inch lead tape) over the top of the previous lead, starting my wrap at the very bottom of the butt cap edge, wrapping up towards the top of the handle, and ended about 3 inches up, the re-applied electrical tape (2.5g), base grip and over grip. Total added weight on the pallet was now 32.5 g (plus extra weight from the leather grip and over-grip). Here are the new strung specs:

Strung Weight: 352.11g
Strung Balance: 32.3cm (6.5pts head-light)
Strung Swing Weight: 357
Strung Twist Weight: 14.7

In short, this was more or less exactly what I was going for, and the racquet swings and twists more effortlessly (just shadow-swinging it for now). I'm interested to see how the OHBH and serve perform now (I'm still pretty capable at 39-yo, 6'2" 195lbs, good fitness, former youth athlete). We'll see!

 

[georgeyew]

It is funny that a "Lite" racquet has 350SW. Are we becoming wimps?

 

[Trip]

Well, the game was definitely different; the eastern forehand had just phased out the continental, and south-western was only in its infancy... So yeah, we still has a fair degree of back-to-front motion going on, and racquets like this helped guide that motion pretty well. I remember being 10 playing with it, thinking to myself, "Are all racquets this hard to swing?", not knowing anything about racquets at all at that point... I'll be hitting this stick this afternoon with a friend, and will report my findings.

 

[Trip]

Update - I had a 1hr45m session with a 4.0 partner in the 88-degree heat yesterday and played the Synergy Lite for about 1 hour of that time. I now understand why many say you gravitate towards the spec of the racquet you learned with. For as goofy the specs on this frame seem, it felt like I was "home" in a way... I must have been experiencing some kind of time portal muscle memory to what it felt like to swing this "log" as a youth, because it settled my game down in the same way now as it did then, mostly around ground strokes and redirecting incoming power. My opponent said that rally balls had a deceptive amount of incoming pace and spin, more so than with the narrower-beam sticks I normally hit with (TT100 310, G360+ Prestige Tour, etc). Playing a more defensive ball with this frame produced a response akin to many offensive balls with the narrower sticks; I found it much easier to turn the tables in a point. With such heavy swing weight (357) I found that I needed solid preparation, spacing and footwork, especially on my OHBH, but once I had those in place the racquet plowed through almost any ball much less strain required by me. For such a heavy beast it did make many aspects of the game, well, easier. One thing I did find a bit challenging at times was control, as the string bed at 110" really did have some trampoline to it, and the outer mains are much more spaced than the centers, so for all that head space I actually needed to keep the ball fairly well centered to maintain good command over location. This was of course a honeymoon session, so it will be interesting to play this frame against more players and see what transpires. Update again soon.