My Racquet Journey Has Ended… For Now
Over the past 5 years, I’ve tried over 100 racquets to try to find the perfect one for my game. In that time, I’ve had my favourites, committing to the 2018 VCORE 95 and the 360+ Head Extreme Tour. Sadly, my Extreme Tours are getting old. I can feel them flexing where they never use to. This is typical for racquets that have been used and played with so much. The graphite does genuinely break down.
It's also been one of my goals for 2023 to start playing tournaments again, maybe even winning a few matches. So it’s time to start choosing my racquet through a different lens. Until now, I had been choosing my tennis racquets based on what felt good, what gave me creativity on my forehand without sacrificing too much forgiveness. A large inspiration for this comes from when I watch these NextGen players, like Alcaraz, Rune, Fritz and Wu. My eyes boggle at their lighter setups.
So these days I’m looking for something lighter and stiffer. I’m hoping to find something that generates power through an efficient beam design rather than a high swingweight. Through these criteria, I’m at a crossroads between the VCORE 98 and the Radical MP. Weirdly, in some ways, they feel like opposites.
The Radical has a very stiff feel and a tight stringbed. It begs you to string looser, leading me to a more powerful string setup than the Tour Sniper I’d settled on before. The VCORE has a much more finicky stringbed. It’s very open and just chews through strings. I’m breaking strings in under 5 hours with that racquet, which is about half as long as I typically get.
Even though near-stock setups are gathering a lot of steam on tour, I was still struggling to find my groove with such a light spec. My off days just felt so much worse. With the stock VCORE 98, I felt like I had to swing out of my shoes to get any court penetration. This worked when I was really feeling good, but how often you really have those “good” days? Almost never.
My play with the Auxetic Radical was much more consistent, even in stock form. However, there are two things that I found off putting. The first is the sound. I’m not sure if it's actually due to the Sound Grommets, but this racquet is so loud when you hit it. It's not just loud, but it's also high pitched, almost, badminton-like, and I say that with the most possible disgust and displeasure.
So I started adding weight to both the VCORE 98 and the Radical MP to try to find a solution. I tried a ton of weight setups with the VCORE 98 and almost nothing worked. For some reason, I lost a lot of tip awareness whenever I customized this racquet, which ruined my timing, making me feel both late and early at all times. I won’t go through each of those setups here, but click back to the previous article if you are interested.
At this point, I was about to completely give up on the VCORE when Brando from the Tennis Warehouse forums reached out to me with a weight setup. Brando has been working on a theory which correlates a player’s height, or more specifically, arm length, to a given recoil weight. This is similar to Travelarajm’s theory on Mgr/i, however, it's more specific about how much weight we are actually dealing with, whereas, Mgr/i is weight agnostic. You can add weight and increase mrg/i, or you can add weight to decrease mrg/i. With recoil weight, any time you add weight, you increase recoil weight, unless you are adding weight exactly in the balance point. So I leaded up the VC98 to the Brando Spec and my world was totally rocked.
I really jived with the racquet as long as it had fresh strings. With this setup, I generated just enough spin to keep the ball dipping down before the baseline. Even better, my two hander became an impenetrable wall. Sadly, the open string pattern is the single limiting factor with this racquet. Even going to a 16g string didn’t yield enough durability, as severe notching occurred within 2 hours, reducing spin just enough so that I was losing control by then end of the first hour of play. If I was anything other than a racquet and string reviewer, I might have stuck with this setup at a 1.35mm string. Unfortunately, this doesn’t suit my needs. I need a racquet that I can use to test normal gauged strings with, making that a fruitless option, and there’s no way I’m going to start stringing before every hit. So back to the Radical MP it is.
I opted to do my own form of customization to the Radical MP, rather than following Brando’s formula. This was because I found the weight in the buttcap to feel slower than the weight at 7 inches. High racquet head speeds are critical for me to feel confident in my forehand, but it's more than just racquet head speed alone that I need. What’s key for me on the forehand side is what I’m calling “tip awareness.”
As much as “tip awareness” sounds like a dick joke, it’s not. One thing that my Extremes and VC95’s shared was this feeling where I could really feel the weight in the tip of the frame in relation to my swing. This tip awareness is crucial for feeling the checkpoints though my forehand stroke. As I swing the racquet, I can clear each checkpoint and make conscious and unconscious adjustments to the angle of my racquet face. There are very few racquets in the world which offer me enough tip awareness to control the angle of my racquet face so diligently. The AeroPro Drive Original, the Liquid Metal Radical MP, the 360+ Extreme Tour and the SV and 2018 VCORE 95s are the only racquets on that list. I was trying to explain this sensation to Brando, as I felt that his weight setups did not give me the tip awareness I needed.
I admit, that part of this could be because I’ve been trying so many racquets in the last few months. He agreed, however, he added that he’s noticed occasional hitches on my forehand side, which could be alleviated by taking my racquet back with both hands. My inner self rolled its eyes, as I’ve heard my dad say that to me millions of times. The Radical MP would not flow with this adapted swing path. My guess is that the twistweight is too high for me to adjust the angle of the racquet face with enough speed and precision during my swing, but honestly, I’m not really sure why, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.
With the Radical, I was playing much lower margin tennis than I would need if I was to win matches in a tournament. Too low over the net. Too flat. Too much spray and pray. I was beginning to lose hope with only two weeks to go before my first tournament of the season. Thankfully, I still had two racquets left to test. The Gravity Pro, which was waiting to get picked up from the post office, and the Solinco Whiteouts which I’d been neglecting on the racquet shelf behind me.
I figured the Gravity Pro would be a pretty incremental update and I doubted that the maneuverability would be that much better with the Auxetic version, so I strung up the 18x20 Whiteout at 48lbs with one of my favourite strings, Grapplesnake Tour Sniper. With little hope in my heart, I hit the court and found something I was not expecting. Near perfection. In stock form.
The Solinco Whiteout racquet flies through the contact zone. The tip awareness is second to none. The feel and dwell time is sweeter and juicier than my modified Extreme Tours. My spin is off the chain. When I take the racquet back with both hands, I have so much additional wrist lag and my forehand feels invincible.
Looking at the specs of the Whiteout, it’s really hard to see why I would like it. Basically nothing lines up with my racquet history. But I don’t care. This is the racquet I want to pick up when I go play tennis.
At this point in time, I have absolutely no idea what technical details make this frame so amazing. What I do know is that it gives me the perfect blend of feel, control, spin and maneuverability for my game. Further, when I heard the tennis mastermind Roman Prokes was a key contributor to the development of this frame, I knew there had to be something special behind this racquet.
So stay tuned for the full review of the Solinco Whiteout including as much info on the development of that frame that I can dig up.
