Tennis Gear, Frequently Asked

An oversize, light, pre-strung frame — 105–115 square inches and under about ten ounces. The HEAD Ti S6 is our top pick, and the Babolat Boost Drive is the better buy if you have already booked lessons. Buy forgiveness, not power: the full ranking is at best tennis rackets for beginners.

A 98–100 square inch frame around 11.0–11.4 oz strung with a 16x19 pattern. The Wilson Blade 98 v9 if your contact is clean and consistent; the Wilson Clash 100 v3 if you still mishit or have any arm sensitivity. See best racquets for 4.0 players.

As a beginner, as little as possible — a sub-$50 frame is genuinely adequate until you can rally consistently. At 3.5 and above, a performance racquet is a three-to-five-year purchase and worth real money. Above the mid range the returns flatten fast: a $200 frame and a $320 frame are much closer than the price gap suggests.

100 for most club players; 98 once your errors are consistently long rather than short. Two square inches translates to about a centimeter of extra margin in each direction, which is roughly the size of a typical club-player miss. See the head size guide.

Measure from the lowest crease in your palm to the tip of your ring finger; that figure in inches is your size. Most adult men come out at 4 3/8" and most adult women at 4 1/4". If you are between two, buy the smaller frame and add an overgrip — see the grip size guide.

It is a published measure of how much the frame deflects under load. Lower is softer, more comfortable and less powerful; higher is stiffer and more powerful but transmits more shock. Under 62 is soft, over 67 is stiff. It is the spec almost nobody checks and the one that decides whether your elbow survives the season.

Strung, unless you already know which string you want. Factory stringing is a generic multifilament at a generic tension — perfectly playable, just not optimized. Once you have a view on string, buying unstrung and choosing your own setup is better value.

Polyester is a stiff monofilament: high control, high spin, hard on the arm, and it goes dead long before it breaks. Multifilament is thousands of fibers in a flexible matrix: soft, powerful, comfortable, less control, breaks sooner. Most club players are in poly when they would play better in a hybrid — see polyester vs multifilament.

Start in the middle of the range printed on your frame. Higher gives control and less power; lower gives power, comfort and a little more spin. Polyester should be strung two to four pounds lower than a multifilament because it plays considerably tighter than its number. The tension guide has the chart.

At minimum, as many times per year as you play per week. On polyester, more often — roughly every 10 to 20 playing hours, because poly loses tension and elasticity well before it snaps. See how often to restring.

A multifilament such as Wilson NXT or HEAD Velocity MLT, or natural gut if the budget allows. Change the string before you change the racquet: a full polyester bed is the most common contributing factor in club-player elbow pain. Full detail at strings for tennis elbow.

No. A dampener reduces the string-bed vibration you hear, not the frame vibration that loads the tendon. Buy one if the ping bothers you. If your elbow hurts, change your string, drop your tension and check your grip size.

You can, and you should not. Running shoes have tall, soft, narrow heels and flexible soles built for forward motion; tennis loads the foot sideways, which is how ankles roll. They also wear through on an abrasive hard court in weeks. See the best tennis shoes.

The ASICS Gel-Resolution X for most players: a re-engineered DYNAWALL lateral support structure and a full-length AHAR Plus outsole. If you have wide feet, the K-Swiss Hypercourt Express 2; if you need a genuine 2E or 4E, New Balance.

Roughly every 60 to 100 hours of play for a performance shoe. Judge the midsole rather than the tread — when the shoe stops feeling supportive on lateral pushes, the foam has compressed permanently even if the outsole looks fine.

Only if you play clay or Har-Tru most weeks. A full herringbone outsole grips, releases and sheds clay in a way a hard-court tread cannot. If you play clay a few times a year, use your hard-court shoes and do not try to slide. See clay court shoes.

The National Tennis Rating Program — the USTA's rating scale for adult recreational tennis, from 1.5 to 7.0 in half-point steps. Almost all club tennis happens between 2.5 and 4.5. See NTRP ratings explained.

A player with dependable groundstrokes on both wings who hits with direction and depth on moderate balls, uses spin and pace tactically, and is comfortable at the net. The gap to 4.5 is consistency under pressure. See what a 4.0 player looks like.

Four things: an oversize pre-strung racquet, court shoes, a case of extra duty balls, and a bag. Add an overgrip and technical socks in the first month. The gear checklist sets out the order.

For repetition on a stroke you already understand, yes — nothing else gives you hundreds of balls in a session. For fixing technique you do not understand, coaching is the better use of the same money. See best tennis ball machines.

We compile the manufacturer-published specifications — head size, strung weight, string pattern, stiffness, outsole compound — score each product against a published rubric weighted by NTRP level, and pull prices live. We do not run a lab and we say so. The full method is on our methodology page.

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