Alright, I finally got some quality time with the TC95 in match play against a player that I usually split sets 50/50 with. For reference, I'm an aggressive baseliner/all-court player with an extreme eastern/semiwestern forehand and an eastern backhand. My serves aren't blazing fast, but they are consistently aggressive and well-placed, and my 2nd serves have pretty big kick. I switch between phases of staying at the baseline and hitting medium pace balls until I can get one to step into and rip, or I mix up the pace with slices to approach the net. Also, I had it strung up with my go-to string Kirschbaum Proline ii at 56 pounds which I found worked perfect for the stick.
First off, I'll start with general playing characteristics. Weight-wise I decided to go a little bit below my usual spec of about 12 ounces to give myself a little room to customize in case it was a little unwieldy. I'm really glad I did because despite only being 11 ounces unstrung (11.75 with strings and OG), this thing is quite stable and has great plow-through. Also, it feel very polarized and almost more head heavy than it actually is. After a brief hitting session I realized the only thing it lacked was a little bit of torsional stability, so I added about 10 grams of lead and 3/9, and after hitting for a set of match play reduced it to 5 grams which proved to be the perfect amount. I might end up adding a little bit of lead to the handle, but we'll see. I've never used a foam filled racquet like this, and the feel was unlike anything I've ever used. I'm a big fan of the muted, solid feel that it provides and appreciate its contribution to the racquet's overall comfort level. Speaking of comfort this thing was a joy on the arm. It felt like a racquet of similar stiffness rating with a thin layer of marshmallow on top of it. It enabled for the initial impact of the racquet to be quite plush, but at the end of impact, you could feel the overall level of flex to be about where its rating would suggest (70 unstrung/64 strung), so it basically felt like something 60ish, but responded and played like 65ish. The head size looks pretty narrow, and the sweet spot was about what you would expect being a tiny bit less forgiving than like a 98, but not major. The sweet spot is about on par with like a TT95, but definitely not as deep as my 6.1 95. Also, I went with the 16x19 pattern because my Kblade just wasn't cutting it for me in raw spin production. Overall, the pattern was pretty open in the middle, but the predictability of the string bed was surprisingly good. Spin comes off of it very nicely, and it reminds me of like a Wilson tour 90 in the way that it produces good spin when you initiate it with a launch angle a little higher than an 18x20 but not quite as erratic as most tweeners. In that department it was exactly what I was looking for. Power level was much higher than what I anticipated from reading other people's comments. Maybe that's because I've been using a Kblade 98 strung with a poly at like 60 pounds lately, but I found this racquet to have plenty of power for a player's frame. In many departments, I would describe this racquet with one word- potential. With power, spin, punch, or anything, if you wanted more of it, you could get it, but it wasn't abundant in any of these categories when you didn't want it to be. For example, power level was pretty moderate in regular rallying, but if you wanted to tee off, it would give you plenty of putaway power and spin to do the job very nicely. It gave me great confidence to go after my shots. Next, I'll list my individual opinions about how it performed for each shot.
Groundstrokes: A- Forehands and backhands were very balanced. It allowed me to hit very heavy balls with good pace and spin consistently. Also, whenever I would want to flatten a shot out (particularly on the forehand), it would still give the ball decent spin to pull it into the court much better than my old racquet. Slices were excellent. This racquet comes in at a close second to my favorite slicing racquet, the Prince TT95. Stability was very good considering its weight, and my only issue was torsional stability. A little lead at 3/9 took care of that. At the beginning of my playing, my timing was a little off from adjusting from my old racquet, so I was having some trouble finding the sweet spot, but I eventually got a feel for it, and didn't struggle much with that anymore. There was also an adjustment period for playing with a more open pattern than I'm used to, so every once in a while the launch angle would throw me off a little bit, and I would sail the ball long, but I'm getting the hang of that still. Also, sometimes, racquets can feel a bit awkward for the one handed backhand, but this one felt right at home.
Volleys: A This is my favorite volleying racquet I've ever used. That foam filled muted feel makes for great feel of volleys. My flat volleys have great punch and my knifing slice volleys have a lot of umph and seem to practically stick to the court. Despite its slightly small sweet spot, off center volleys were still decent. Additionally, I only hit 3 overheads the entire match today and made 2 of them. Not a large sample size but they felt good!
Serve: A+ Plenty of people have talked about how well this frame serves. All I can say is that it lives up to the hype! The polarized feel made it feel like my motion had a smoother kinetic chain and it connected with the ball like a hammer. Flat serves had great oomph and consistency. Slice serves were fantastic with a surprising amount of pace on them. Kick serves were decent. It may have been because it was my first time in match play with it, but I didn't get quite dialed in with my kick serve. I could see how some people might prefer like a Pure Drive on serve, but I love this racquet for first serves, and my second serves will get better with time.
Returns: A+ I thought people were making too much of a big deal about this racquet's returns at first. I've never been one to really notice much difference in the way a racquet returns serve compared to how it plays with regular groundstrokes, but this stick is spectacular. The way the weight it distributed makes it easy to maneuver, but it feel like it carries so much momentum to the ball. My second serve returns are pretty strong, but first serve returns aren't exactly a strong suit of my game, but this racquet made a big difference in the aggressiveness of my return games. In fact, a lot of times I found myself pounding a hard return, following it to the net, and putting away the easy volley.
Overall: In my match, I ended up losing 6-2 6-7(6) 7-6(5), but I would consider that a very strong outing for only owning the racquet for a single day. The only shortcoming of the racquet for me was touch. Usually, drop shots are my specialty, and while I love the muted feel on every other stroke, it didn't bode well for my drops. This seems like something that'll get better in time though and is very minor. The main reason I selected this racquet was that I wanted a good blend of my two favorite racquets- the 6.1 95 16x18 and the Kblade 98. The 6.1 had great putaway power and spin, but it could be unwieldy at times, and I was never a big fan of serving with it. The Kblade had great control with pretty good serves and volleys, but it lacked raw spin and power. This racquet delivered on those fronts while providing a plush feel, bomb serves, and some character. So there you have it. Those are my impressions, and I could not be happier with the racquet. I can confidently consider this my new stick of choice!
*Also, I hit my 2nd ever tweener with this racquet, so it's destiny that I should use it.