What's behind the tennis world's move to lighter racquets?

"Use the heaviest racquet you can comfortably swing." That was once the norm when it came to a tennis player’s equipment. Maximum weight provided maximum stability to handle and turn around an opponent’s shot, while trampling through contact to generate pace of your own. When it came to creating force, mass was the essential ingredient.

That thinking has gone the way of the two-handed forehand. The game has gotten so fast that deft handling and swing speed trump heft. Pros have less time to react and require racquets that can accelerate quickly and produce offense from any position.

Lighter frames also accentuate the more vertical swings of the modern game, applying more rpms to go along with the explosive power. That’s what top players like Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner do and it’s permeating throughout the tours.

“While this isn’t necessarily perfect terminology,” says Lyndon Krause, Manager of Racquet Sports Equipment for Tennis Australia, “it could be loosely summarized as: Modern players produce power via swinging lighter, stiffer racquets faster, while traditionally power has been generated by swinging heavier, less-stiff racquets slower.”

Krause points out that this also allows players to reach top racquet head speeds with more compact technique. Heavier racquets required more time and longer swing paths to build momentum. Players can subsequently play closer to the baseline and not feel rushed by their equipment.

Victor Humbert, Global Tecnilab & Product Manager at Tecnifibre studied these trends. When he set out to update the brand’s T-Fight line—used by players such as Iga Swiatek and Daniil Medvedev—he compared the equipment of players at the top of the ATP Tour aged 30 years-and-over versus those 22 years-and-under. He determined that, generationally speaking, the average weight of racquets have decreased 18g and the swingweight is down more than 20 points. As a result, the weight on the new T-Fights released earlier this year has been redistributed to emphasize maneuverability.

Roger Federer’s equipment definitely trended old school. Before his knee forced him into retirement, he was working on a new racquet for a possible return to the tour. He never considered his previous Wilson Pro Staff RF97 to be unusually heavy—it was around 340g unstrung—but still wanted a whippier, more agile frame to create extra spin and sharper angles.

“When I spoke to the people at Wilson, they said that every player nowadays is playing with much lighter frames,” Federer told tennis.com last summer while promoting the new RF01 racquet franchise. “I was a little bit shocked, to be honest, how light they were going.”

“There’s so much speed in today’s game,” says Babolat’s Chris Hoeland.“If you’re using an absolute brick you’re not going to be able to keep up. Players are manipulating the racquet in different ways than they used to, and you can’t do that with a heavy racquet.”

Players are manipulating the racquet in different ways than they used to, and you can’t do that with a heavy racquet. Chris Hoeland, Babolat

Hoeland, a marketing manager with Babolat, works with many of the brand’s sponsored touring pros and top-ranked juniors. The company’s signature ambassador, Rafael Nadal, used a Pure Aero during his playing career that wasn’t overly heavy (317g unstrung), but had a massive swingweight. Alcaraz, Babolat’s current headliner, for a time used a Pure Aero 98 that was the same weight (305g unstrung) as the model sold on store shelves. He has since added a modest amount of weight to it, but is still lighter than Nadal’s and with about 10% less swingweight.

“The swingweight is probably the most important number,” says racquet technician, Roman Prokes. “If I could only look at one number, it would be that.”

Prokes has customized racquets for a who’s who of tennis all-timers, including Andre Agassi and Novak Djokovic. Rather than the static weight of the frame, Prokes pays closer attention to how heavy it swings through the air. He believes the sweet spot for today’s players is a strung swingweight anywhere between 320 to 330 points. This allows for rapid acceleration, but with enough ballast for power and stability. Anything above that becomes increasingly difficult to wield effectively.

“When I spoke to the people at Wilson, they said that every player nowadays is playing with much lighter frames. I was a little bit shocked, to be honest, how light they were going.”Roger Federer

Similarly, there’s a limit to what touring players need in terms of static weight. With racquet technologies constantly evolving, the materials and dampening features allow frames to provide enough performance without the need for excessive weight. Gone are the days of continually adding lead strips to the hoop and handle just for the sake of increasing the frame’s overall weight.

Instead, players are being more strategic and judicious when it comes to adding mass to their frames. It’s finetuned customization that puts weight only where the player absolutely needs it. Prokes recalls working with Frances Tiafoe and how the subtlest difference in weight affected his performance.

“We added 2g to the tip of the frame and it worked great,” says Prokes of Tiafoe’s Yonex. “But when we went up to 4g he felt it slowed his swing down too much. And Frances is a big, strong guy—he can obviously handle the extra weight.”

A few years ago, Prokes also worked with Djokovic when he was transitioning from a racquet with an 18x20 string pattern to a slightly more open 18x19 setup. He was looking for something more arm-friendly and forgiving that would also give him some easier power.

“Even with Novak we dropped like 8g, which on a tennis racquet is a lot,” says Prokes. “The level of tennis is ridiculously high, almost from everyone. Nobody has time anymore to be lugging racquets that are 340g unstrung.”

Welcome to the new norm.