Extended Lunch Break

If anyone has ever been interested in a new tennis racquet and went to their local tennis club to try out a “demo” racquet they will understand or unfortunately not understand what I am about to talk about. First off, most sales reps for tennis companies only educate whatever tennis instructor is under contract with them. Therefore any other tennis instructor has no clue about how the new Wilson tennis racquets play compared to the Prince racquets they are under contract with unless they go out of their way to play with them all. In result customers get “tricked” by these instructors to buy whatever racquet the instructor they are most in contact with is trying to sell. This is a small problem I have, but there is not much of a way to stop companies from doing this. An instructor sells racquets for them and in turn gets free stuff. I get it. However, what I don’t get is that tennis racquet companies are making racquets that look exactly or almost exactly like each other and consumers and instructors are being confused all the time. At a busy tennis facility, most of the instructors are already on the tennis court when costumers come and want to demo. Some of these customers come out to their instructor and ask for help on choosing a racquet but a lot of them don’t and will ask whoever being the desk for a racquet, which they know nothing about. Sometimes these customers will just take whatever racquet they have heard of, others will just take whatever one has colors they like, and the rest will just try to copy what the professionals use. I can’t even count how many times I will see an 11 year old or younger kid come on the tennis court with a tennis racquet that weights over 11 ounces unstrung. Now some of you reading this will have no idea if 11 ounces is heavy or light and that is part of the problem. An 11+ oz racquet should only be used by an advanced player, most likely a high level high school player or better. A racquet at this weight may feel okay just hitting a couple balls but in a real match it can give you severe arm soreness if you can not handle the weight. Tennis companies are coming out with so many racquets at the same time with similar names that customers are most likely to pick out a racquet that is totally wrong for them. There are also many cases like the Wilson K Factor line where two of the racquets look identical to each other but K Six One Team is 10.9 ounces strung and the K Six One 95 is 12.3. Numerous times an adult or kid will come out with the 12.3 ounce racquet and I will have to look at the inside label and tell them that they got the wrong one. Also, what is the deal with the slight differences in string patter to totally confused people even more. To go along with the K Factor line, there is a K Six One 95 with (16×18) string pattern and one with (18×20) and are both the same weight. What do you tell someone who tries the one racquet one week and totally loves it and the next week they grab the other one by mistake and totally hate it. Right there Wilson probably lost a sale. I like that these companies are coming up with new technologies and ways to make everyone happy, but they really need to think of the average customer and even the somewhat educated tennis consumer. I really don’t think most of the USTA 4.0 level adults or even most of the good high school players really have a clue about tennis racquets. I see too many of them go out and buy 2 Babolat racquets and then 4 months later buying 2 Wilson racquets and then just continuing the cycle. In conclusion, there are many things that screw with the consumers mind and that really make the tennis instructors life harder. I wish these tennis companies would take a little more time to educate full tennis staffs and put out as much information as they can to the average club player so they can really buy the right racquet for themselves.