Racket Matching and Customization: My experience (Babolat PS)

PFG1

Rookie
Lifetime tennis player, and never payed much attention to getting frames matched or customized. I've just always felt like I had too many other holes in my game to really perseverate on frame weight/matching. For some context, I was a high level HS player, played only recreationally in college, took a 10 year break, and picked it back up five years ago as a 4.5 level player.

Over the last 4 years, I've made a significant effort to improve my fitness and technique (completely rebuilt my strokes from scratch) with the goal making the jump into 5.0/open level play. As I reached this goal, I became more and more aware of my frame and string set ups.

Switched over to the new PS98 16x19 305g, and decided it was time to try a matching and customization service. I loved the frame, but was swinging out of my shoes. Took the 2 frames to a local shop. Some details for those who nerd out over this stuff:

Frame 1:

Static Weight: 304
Swing Weight: 294
31.5cm balance

Frame 2:

Static: 300g
Swing: 296
32cm balance

Guy doing the work told me I got pretty lucky, as he's seen some nasty variations with Babolat frames. Post customization, both frames are now:

Static: 307
Swing: 303
33 balance

I've had them for 3 days, and I'm shocked how good these are with a little more weight. They retain the PS characteristics that I loved on demo, but are much more steady. Its going to take just a bit to get use to the new weight from the baseline (i'm catching my FH a bit late from time to time), but wow wow on serves and returns (aka the parts of the game that no one wants to work on, but the parts that took me to the next level). So stable on the return, and noticeably extra pop on the serve.

All to say - if you've never had rackets matched and customized, I recommend giving it a try.
 
  • Like
Reactions: esm
Top