Tennis gear buying guide covers racquet selection, string types, and shoe fit with tested recommendations and price-to-performance breakdowns.
Buying a first racquet for a child is one of the few tennis purchases where the right answer is almost entirely measurable. Get the length right and most of the anxiety disappears.
On the bench we have a flat-palmed right hand, a steel ruler, and a tape measure. The player is a 5'9" club-level baseliner who has bought three racquets online in four years and returned none of them…
Here is a claim we will spend the rest of this piece earning: for most baseline players, the racquet spec that decides whether you like a frame is one almost nobody quotes on a product page.
There is a small, persistent belief in tennis fan culture: that the surest way to hold onto a championship moment is to get it signed onto a giant tennis ball.
There is a number worth staring at before you spend anything: about $120. That is the gap between a competent budget tennis shoe — call it the $60 tier — and a current flagship court shoe at $180.
Last winter we did something slightly invasive. A longtime club member let us photograph and inventory his tennis gear closet — everything he'd been given or bought over four years — and we sorted it…