Every string and racquet we've put through the testing cycle, newest first. Scored against a long-running reference set, with the testing protocol shown on each page.
Two frames of the same advertised model sat on the diagnostic bench last spring — a current-generation control frame and the version it replaced.
The standard advice goes like this: if you want more pace without swinging harder, buy a Babolat Pure Drive 2025 and stop overthinking it.
You have probably stood in the demo rack with both frames in your hands and asked the only question that matters: is the 2024 mid-sized control racquet genuinely different to swing, or is the gen-4 a…
Here is the claim we will spend the rest of this piece earning the right to make: if you are cross-shopping the Babolat Pure Aero and the Pure Drive, the string you install matters more to how the…
The advice you'll get in most shop conversations is simple: the Wilson Blade 98 (v9) and the Yonex Ezone 98 are both 98-square-inch, 16x19, roughly 305-gram players' frames, so the choice comes down…
We taped a small accelerometer to the throat of a Babolat Pure Drive, strung at 52 lbs with a polyester main and synthetic gut cross, and fed it forty flat forehands off a ball machine at a metered 55…
Every two or three years a flagship spin frame arrives with a number attached. A new groove pattern, a reshaped beam, a softer layup, and somewhere in the launch deck a figure that suggests this…
There is a number that should govern every vibration dampener review, and it is close to zero. Across the peer-reviewed work that has actually instrumented this question — most directly Stroede, Noble…
There is a belief that shows up in nearly every forum thread about a new frame: that the latest generation, or the "plus" or "tour" variant sitting next to the standard model on the wall, is a…
Babolat's Custom Damp ships with Rafael Nadal's name attached and a small bag of rubber inserts, which is exactly the kind of pairing that makes us suspicious.
There is a sound a crowd makes when a player turns their back to the net, spreads their legs, and flicks the ball over their own head toward an opponent they cannot see.
Vibration dampeners are the cheapest thing in the bag and the most over-explained. Players who have spent a season fine-tuning string tension and swingweight will drop a five-dollar rubber button…