Video:Best Tennis Racquets for Beginners
with Jeff CooperTennis racquets for beginners are generally inexpensive, but even within a narrow price range, models vary greatly in quality. Watch this About.com video to learn more about the best tennis racquets for beginner players.See Transcript
Transcript:Best Tennis Racquets for Beginners
Hi, I'm Jeff Cooper for About.com, here to help you find the best racquet for a beginner.
Bottom End Tennis Racquets for Beginners
Beginner racquets can be very inexpensive. This is a $10 racquet, and it's made basically of aluminum, but it says "titanium" on it. Even though this says "titanium," it's maybe 5% titanium; it's basically aluminum, and an aluminum racquet is okay until you start hitting the ball harder, then it's going to bend back too much when you hit the ball, and you'll lose control. It's also very light, and that means it's going to transmit more shock and torsion to your arm. So, this racquet is basically a bottom-end racquet at $10.
Wide Frame Tennis Racquets
Now, moving up a step is a racquet like this one, which is about $18. This is also aluminum, but it has a wider frame, and this wider frame helps resist the shock of being hit by the ball more than a narrower frame would. A wider frame is stiffer, and in an aluminum racquet especially, more stiffness is good, because it resists getting bent back. This racquet, at the middle range, is a pretty good choice that you could play with for a while. It has decent control; it also has decent weight to help protect your arm.
Composite Tennis Racquets for Beginners
The next step up from this one would be a composite racquet. A composite racquet is made of a mixture of fiberglass and usually graphite. In this case, it also has a little bit of titanium in it. The "TI" here stands for titanium, and again, this racquet probably doesn't have much titanium in it, but titanium's a very strong metal, so the racquet companies like to say they have some titanium in the racquet, because it implies strength. This racquet also has a pretty nice weight to it, so between the composite composition and the nice weight, this could be a decent choice for you to play with maybe for your first year or so of tennis, and this one's around $25, so we're still not talking about a whole lot of expense.
For more on racquets on everything else in tennis, visit About.com.