Racket for a 9 year old girl ?

[SC in MA]

Anyone have a recommendation for a racket for a 9 year old girl (my niece)?

She's 4'5" tall and weighs 61lbs. She's been taking group lessons for about 7 months. I've hit with her a few times (mostly handfeeding balls) and her stroke mechanics are not bad. She loves to hit. She'll be taking more group lessons this summer and I'll probably hit with her a couple of times a week.

Her current racket is a 25" Wilson ATP, which is an older racket that looks to be all aluminum. One day she forgot her racket, so she used one of my daughter's old rackets, an adult size Prince CTS Lightning 110 (100% Graphite). She choked way up on it and said she liked it more than her regular junior racket.

Is there a better junior sized racket that I could get her ? Some of the ones I saw at Sports Authority look more like toys than rackets to be used for tennis.

 

[carTW]

Dunlop 300g Junior (36") is a good choice. I suspect the ProKennex 5g junior is good too, although I did not try it. Both are $60 on TW

 

[BHud]

If she has developed her strokes to some degree, skip the junior racquets and go to a lighter standard length offering like the Prince Shark. She can choke up initially until she grows into it. Those junior racquets are very hard to play with once you begin making contact w/ the ball more frequently.

 

[snoflewis]

there are babolat rackets for younger kids...they're called the pure drive juniors (available in 4 and 4 1/8) and aeropro drive (available in 4)..they're $80...and if she doesnt like that..you should probably go w/ what BHud said...get her an extremely light racket so she can grow into it...