By Daniel Stern

So many kinds of racquets. Head heavy. Head light. Red with silver stripes. Yellow with black stripes. Japanese made. American made. Mid-plus. Oversize. How do you choose?

For most casual players, testing out 10 or more frames is too expensive and far too time-consuming. It’s so much easier to just select the racquet your favorite player is using.

Wandering around the 2007 Australian Open, I stopped by the racquet company booths that stand between Rod Laver Arena and Vodafone Arena in order to get a bit more information on what the stars are playing with this season.

Are you a Federer fan? Go for the new Wilson K Factor (also used by Jonas Bjorkman). Like Martina Hingis? Try the new Yonex RQS-11. Want to pound the ball like James Blake or Serena Williams? That’s a bit tougher to figure out.

Williams is currently playing with a Wilson nBlade, but for some reason it's painted black. This racquet is a dramatic change in head size for Serena, using a 106” frame, down from 113”.

Blake is currently playing with a Prince-made, painted copy of his old Dunlop. Prince reps say that Blake has had difficulties choosing an original Prince stick, but has finally picked one that’s in production. It should be available to the public this summer.

But beware, many pro players change their sticks quite often (e.g. Sharapova, Dementieva), so you just might not get to “be like Rog” for that long.

While at the Prince booth on Saturday, I asked a rep about Jennifer Capriati, expecting him to give me the usual “she’s injured, not playing yet” response. Instead, I was told that Capriati recently ordered some new racquets to test out, supposedly planning to start hitting again. This information was repeated by another Prince rep on Sunday, but then denied by a third rep today. So no change there – the Capriati outlook is unknown. She did, however, tell a Las Vegas conference last week that she’s “still trying to come back.”