From age 14 to 23, I played tennis with the same racket model—the 2013 Babolat Pure Drive, a venerable mix of spin, precision, and lightweight stability, to be specific. At one point, I had as many as 4 of these bad boys, preferably strung with Prince synthetic gut vertically and Babolat Pro Hurricane on the crosses. In hindsight, I realize I was overly-superstitious about tennis rackets, believing I could discern a great many differences in string tension and grip size that were remarkably unimportant. I probably could have found a racket to better suit my style, to be honest. Anyway, I played with this model and it worked pretty well; over the years, though, my 2013 Babolat Pure Drives began to disappear, either through on-court incidents or geography. As of last year, I was down to 2; one of them is still sitting in my mom’s apartment in Brooklyn, and the other I shoved in a checked bag to come with me back to Saigon. It did its job for a while, but one humid morning I lost it on a service follow-through and it cracked into several pieces. Farewell, my old friend.
Since then, I’ve played with whatever rackets I could find, borrowed others, and, along the way, realized that perhaps less is more. One week, I bought an absurdly heavy Wilson stick sight unseen out of desperation and, not wanting to cancel my evening league appearance, played one doubles match with it. A sore bicep followed for the next 4 days. Right now I’m playing with a Prince model that I found on Facebook, the seller of which messaged me later and said he also had an impressive range of watches should I be interested. No complaints so far. Nevertheless, I’m still craving something free of nanotechnology or patent-pending chemistry, something irrefutably solid. A touch of history wouldn’t hurt, either.
Agassi, mid-serve with the Graphite
The Prince Original Graphite was introduced in 1980 to usher tennis into the modern age. With an oversized head and a weight of nearly 355 grams, it’s a powerhouse the likes of which the sport had never seen. And it still has a cult following to this day. Way back when, I used to traverse the midwestern United States to rub shoulders with the top-ranked regional 14 and -unders, and I still remember a couple guys who hit with it. Of course, its real sellers were Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Monica Seles. The old guard went as far as to dub the new oversized rackets as made for “cheaters.” The new type of power that could come from Prince’s graphite technology was previously unthinkable, and strangely effortless. It’s hard to think of an advancement that has changed any sport more than what happened with racket technology from Prince at this time; I genuinely believe that if you put a 19 year old Rafael Nadal against McEnroe in his prime, Nadal would win 0 and 0. This isn’t a knock to Johnny, I just think the new type of spin employed by the guys at the top, and specifically Nadal, has completely altered the game.
These days, Babolat and Head have options for chips that track swing speed, regularity, and a slew of other analytics. But lately I’d rather freeze time with the graphite. In the official Tennis Warehouse re-visit of the graphite, Chris Edwards observed,
“During the test every swing felt like a historic moment. I did my best to tap into the massiveness of an Agassi forehand and the topspin loop of a Sabatini backhand, all while trying to cover the court with Chang-like speed. All names from the past, yes, but they all used this racquet at some stage of their careers. The question is, can you?”
That’s versatility, as far as a tennis racket is concerned. Every once in a while, I search southern Vietnam’s various secondhand online marketplaces for a pristine graphite, and I think I may have finally found one. (Nevermind the fact that it’s located in Long An—I think my bike can make it there.) I feel that I’m usually a pretty measured person, but on the tennis court it can be another story. A few forehands missed and I get to thinking about life’s existential problems, how a millisecond stands between perfection and utter desperation, and, well, stuff like that. It stands to reason, then, that getting back to basics could do me some good. I’ll give it a try, at least.