Racket advice please!

[prb3512]

Advice please...

2 years ago I broke one of the 2 Babolat Aero Storm Tour Cortex rackets I had. I always believe in having 2 rackets in the bag I case I break a sting mid match. I searched everywhere and couldn't find another one to pickup. So I demoed a bunch and ended up with the Wilson PS97 Autograph. Loved it for the control and plow through I got. I was being told that my balls were coming fast and hard.

I used to play with a lot of spin and safer margins to keep the ball in. Since switching my shots have flattened out a lot. Recently I've been hitting long more than I ever have. I'm loosing my matches from errors instead of the winning with safe aggressive play. I know that sounds like an oxymoron. I'm about a 3.5-4.0 player.

So to my question, I've started to demo again. I've demoed the new Babolat PA tour. Played pretty well. Then I heard that they were rereleasing a new version of my aero storm. I haven't demoed it yet, but the specs look way out of my normal range and I've never messed with modifying rackets. I've heard nightmares from people I've talked to about it.

Suggestions? Any other rackets I should demo? Could it be strings? I took a lease from my old coach and he thought my form was good and about the same as before...

 

[CopolyX]

Here are some in the Aero Storm Tour wheelhouse:
Racquets with maximum of 10% Difference (+/-)
Babolat Aero Storm GT
Dunlop Biomimetic F2.0 Tour
Dunlop Biomimetic S 2.0
Yonex Vcore Tour F 97 (290)
Dunlop BioFibre M2.1
Solinco Pro 10
Dunlop Biomimetic 400
Head Graphene XT Speed S
Yonex Vcore Tour F 93
Wilson Ultra 97

 

[TennisCJC]

It's always fun to get new rackets but you can do a lot with string tension and types of strings to gain more control. You don't mention what type of strings or tension you use, but in general:

1. increase tension to tone down liveliness - this may give you a touch more spin and shorten depth a bit
2. go to soft mains (syn gut, multi or natural gut) and copoly crosses to increase control/spin. If you are using all syn gut, natural gut or multi, this will give you more control and spin
3. go to copoly mains with soft cross to tone down the liveliness even more than #2
4. go to full copoly to really tone down liveliness, gain control and spin

If you go with copoly hybrids or full copoly, go with lower tensions so you don't wreck your wrist, elbow and shoulder.

Or, just get a new racket which is probably more fun.