3 Levels of Racquet Customization

Beckett applies copper balancing tape to the Auxetic Speed Pro.

So it’s time to get the most out of your tennis racquet with a little customization. Customizing your racquet can open up huge potential when it comes to how your game and your racquet work together. Not only is it possible to increase the power, spin and stability of your racquet, but we can also synchronize the racquet’s weight distribution to give you more control over your swing, creating more effortless and natural strokes.

To be clear, customization isn’t some magic trick that will fix all your technical problems. If you have a hitch in your serve, you’ll probably still have that hitch after you customize your racquet. This is more about dialing in your setup to squeeze that last percentage out of every shot, to help you find that last ball in the pivotal rally, deep in the 3rd set tiebreaker.

This is everything you need to know about racquet customization.

Level 1: Grips

First, let’s talk grips. Most racquets come new with a synthetic base grip, sometimes also called a replacement grip. Most people, from the rec level to the pro level, put an overgrip on top of the base grip because they are cheaper to buy and easier to replace. Still, it’s up to you which kind of grip you want to play with, and it’s mostly going to be trial and error in terms of what kind of feel you prefer. Sticking with a raw replacement grip will feel firmer, you’ll have a smaller grip size, as there’s less material, but they also tend to be less tacky. If you’ve even had issues with slippery hands, overgrips will be a better solution.

Replacement Grips

There are two main types of replacement grips, synthetic grips and leather grips. Synthetic grips tend to feel softer and more squishy.  The standard Babolat grip, Syntec Team, is on the firmer side, but you can also get squishier ones, like the Karakal PU Super Grip which is used by Andy Murray.

Many people, including me, opt to replace their base grip with leather. There are two reasons you might choose leather, one, because you like a firmer feel with more accentuated bevel ridges and, two, because you want to add some weight. My personal favourite leather grip is this one from VT Advantec which I’ve been using for years. The leather is very soft, but it’s proven to be quite durable and reusable due to the vibration dampening liner.

I try to avoid Head leather because they are too thick and I lose the bevel feel and Wilson because they feel too thin and plasticky. I’ve also heard good things about the TW private label grip, but, one of the best things about the VT Advantec leather grips is that you can peel off the vibration dampening backing to save a ton of weight. This is great if you want the leather feel without increasing the weight.

Over Grips

You can use as many as you want, famously, players like Novak Djokovic and Simon “Hook-Cuell-Ese” use two overgrips which increases comfort. You can get tacky and dry grips, I’ve been using Tourna for ages, which is the classic dry grip, but recently, I’ve actually made a change. I’ve found that both the Solinco Heaven Grip, and the Luqi dry grip offer a similar feel to the Tourna Grips, they aren’t too soft or slippery, like the Yonex or Babolat dry’s, and they are way more durable than Tournagrip. Just know that everytime you add a grip, you’ll be adding weight to the handle of the racquet, making it more head light.

Level 2: Weight, Stability and Power

The most common way to add weight is with lead tape. If you are nervous about lead exposure, you can also buy tungsten tape or copper tape using my links in the description. I personally find lead easier to work with and I just wash my hands after and try not to eat the lead. If there are any takeaways from this article, it’s that I want to encourage you to experiment.

Nothing seriously bad is going to happen if you “put the balancing tape in the wrong place.” Arguably, there are no wrong places. All of these balancing tapes, whether its lead, copper or tungsten, are easily removable. If you’ve never done this before, I encourage you to just add some weight anywhere on the frame and see how it feels. While you play, feel, do you notice the racquet feels harder to swing? Maybe it’ll feel easier. Feel the way the racquet interacts with the ball. Does it feel more stable? Does it feel more solid? Are you hitting late more often now?

And if you don’t notice anything, that’s fine, try a different configuration.

Where to Add the Weight

There are 4 primary locations you might consider adding weight. 12 o’clock, 10 and 2, 3 and 9, and the handle. Here’s what happens with each of these.

Adding weight at 12 will increase the swingweight the most for a given increase in static weight.  This means you’ll increase power and stability the most for the amount of weight you are adding, though it’s also going to be the most demanding way to add weight. While higher swingweights are more powerful and stable, they are also less maneuverable and more taxing to use throughout a match.

Adding weight at 3 and 9 increases torsional stability by having the greatest impact on twistweight. This will help you most on off-centre shots that cause your racquet to twist in your hand.

10 and 2 is a nice “best of both worlds” option, combining the effective increase in swingweight from a 12 o’clock placement and the bump in torsional stability from the 3 and 9 o’clock placement. Tennis Warehouse typically encourages this configuration the most as they have found this leads to the best combination of power and stability.

Adding weight in the handle is least noticeable. This will have a minimal impact on maneuverability, with some users citing improved maneuverability from increased tail weight, though I think that’s quite subjective to your technique, and you’ll also see a minor increase in stability. I find increased handle weight most helpful on shots with slower swingspeeds, like returns, volleys and backhand slices.

How Much Weight Should You Add?

In general, the further away from your hand that you add the weight, the more noticeable it will be to swing.

At 12 o’clock adding 1 or 2 grams alone will be noticeable depending on your sensitivity. For a standard length racquet, expect every gram at 12 to increase swingweight by 3 pts. 3 pts will be noticeable to some players and 6 pts will be noticeable to almost everyone, regardless of level.

At 10 and 2, I’d start with 1 gram in each location, so a total of 2 grams to the hoop. Depending on your racquet’s geometry, expect swingweight to increase by 4-5pts.

At 3 and 9, I’d again start with 1 gram in each location. Again, depending on your racquet’s geometry, you’ll be increasing your swingweight by about 3 pts and the twistweight by about 0.3. Most changes in twistweight become noticeable at about a 0.5pt increase, but this difference is more subtle than swingweight as different techniques can be more or less sensitive to twistweight.

To the handle, I’d start with 5-10 gram chunks. You can do this by swapping to a leather grip, wrapping balancing tape underneath the replacement grip, using puddy under the trapdoor, or if you have a Solinco racquet, using one of their weight control modules. I also discovered that the Solinco door fits in Dunlop racquets as well

Behavior on Contact

For Level 2, our focus with the customization centers around how the racquet interacts with the ball. If we simplify things, every time you hit a forehand, a backhand, a serve, whatever shot, you are creating a collision between the ball and the racquet. To win this collision, we want to apply the right amount of force to the shot. The more force you apply, the more stable the racquet will feel, the more power will be translated into the shot and depending on your swing path, the more spin will be applied. We can describe this as Force = mass x acceleration, where mass is the racquet and acceleration is the how fast you can swing. So if you add weight to your racquet, you are increasing the potential force that you can apply to the ball, assuming that you can maintain your swingspeed.

Level 3: Fine Tuning

For level three, we are moving past the experimentation phase and into the fine tuning phase. Level 3 customizers will be matching their racquets to the same spec, like pro’s and fine tuning their racquets for optimum performance. You’ll need to track 3 important metrics for this phase which does require special equipment.

Static weight, in grams, which is the overall weight of the racquet. For this you will need a scale, accurate to at least one gram, but the more accurate, the better.

Balance point, which I think is tracked best in centimeters, with the butt of the racquet being 0cm and increasing as the racquet becomes more head heavy. There are a few ways to measure balance point, you can use a balance board, a DIY balance board with a ruler and a pivot point, but my most precise and effortless results come from the Briffidi BP-1 and a scale.

Swingweight, which describes how heavy the racquet feels to swing and is the best indicator for the potential power and stability of a given racquet. The cheapest way to measure swingweight is the Briffidi SW1. This takes advantage of your phone’s gyroscope, which I’ve personally found to be more accurate and repeatable than the pro machines that cost thousands of dollars.

Setting Goals

The next thing you need to do for level 3 is set goals for your setup. Your first goal should be to match your racquets in terms static weight, balance and swingweight. This will minimize any adjustments you have to make when switching between frames if you break a string during a match. For me personally, it also really helps when testing different string setups as I can take those variables out of the equation for my string reviews. If you’ve already matched your racquets and you still feel that something is missing, there are a few different frameworks you can follow to dial in your setup.

Here’s the framework I use:

TennCom Method

Start by maxing swingweight. Determine your maximum swingweight by slowly adding weight at 12 o’clock until you’ve hit your maximum. How do you determine your maximum?

You want to be swinging freely throughout the match, or for however long you typically play. For most of us, this would be a best of 3 set match, for an ATP player, it might be a best of 5 set match, and for some of us, maybe this is just 90 minutes of rallying. As long as you can take a full swing, at the swingspeed that’s most profitable for your game, for your entire playing duration, you are good, keep adding weight until you start getting tired from the racquet’s weight, and then go back. For me, and I think most players who don’t exercise outside of the tennis court, the maximum swingweight is about 330-335 depending on your physique.

Different players and different techniques will have different maximum swingweights. Take Sinner vs Djokovic, Sinner is at 340 and Djokovic at 360. While most of us would struggle to manage Sinner’s 340 swingweight, it’s a baby racquet compared to grandpa Djoker’s stick, even though Sinner is the physically larger player. Sinner’s lower swingweight helps him swing faster and more explosively than Djokovic because his technique demands it. I suspect if Sinner went much higher, we wouldn’t see the same kind of violent wrist snap out of the corners because the racquet would be too heavy for him to accelerate with the same vigor through a grueling match against the world’s best.

Once you’ve found your maximum swingweight, it’s time to tune for other metrics. This is the point where subjectivity completely takes over. It’s up to you to decide if you want to bring some of that headweight down from 12 to 3 and 9 or 10 and 2 to increase the twistweight for better torsional stability. Maybe you want to counterbalance that head weight with more weight in the handle.

General Guidelines

Here are a few generalizations I have about how different weight setups can work for different players.

If you are a spin player, someone who counter punches a lot, creates space on the court with angles and height over the net, keep your twistweight as low as possible so you can more easily manipulate the angle of your racquet face.

If you are a flat hitter, go with a higher twistweight setup to give your racquet better stability as you strike through the ball.

For one handed backhands, add more weight to the handle to keep the balance lower and more manageable.

For two handers, you can probably handle a lot more head weight on your backhand than your single handed forehand. You’ll have to decide which stroke helps you win more points and how you want to manage those trade offs.

I’ve found that more extreme grips work better with higher balance points, lower static weights and lower swingweights. Setups like Sinner’s, work exceptionally well on bent-arm forehands with Western grips and a lot of racquet lag.

Eastern forehand grips tend to work better with more headlight setups and they can handle heavy specs due to a less violent swing path.

With all of that said, I want to emphasize, those are generalizations. Tennis is so subjective and there are always exceptions. We all have different backgrounds, different coaches, we learned with different racquets and we play on different surfaces at different altitudes with different balls.

So What Should You Do?

Well, at the end of the day, you need to find what works for you. Especially at the rec level, techniques vary wildly, and just because some guy on a forum insists that adding 50g to the handle has increased the maneuverability of his racquet, doesn’t you are going to have that same experience. Have fun tinkering with weight. Track your progress. Talk about it with your nerdiest hitting partner about your recent discovery that 350SW is goated. Go on that journey together. See who between you, plays better with a more head heavy setup versus a more headlight setup.

Tennis for recreational players, is, by definition, about having fun. If you are a nerd like me, the customization is more about the fun of what different weights setups can do for your game, than actually improving. The only customizations that are even close to a road to game improvement are matching your racquets. That’s why all the pro’s have matched racquets, yet between the different pro’s, you’ll find huge variation in specs.