Tennis Lab takes the guesswork out of buying a new racquet

There are eight indoor hard courts at the National Tennis Center in Melbourne, Australia. At the very end of the bank sits Court 8, one of only three courts in the world outside of professional tournaments that is outfitted with Hawk-Eye.

The ball-tracking technology is most known for its line-calling capabilities, but it can also tabulate reams of shot data including ball speed, spin and location that can be applied to a variety of training purposes.

Tennis Lab uses it to fit you with the right racquet.

Originally called Racquet Room, it started as a Tennis Australia research project. Using Hawk-Eye data, they wanted to see what insights could be drawn from racquets, strings and equipment. They took about 50 players—from touring pros like Sam Stosur down to rank novices—and put them through a series of shot evaluations using a group of blacked-out racquets. When the players gave their feedback, they didn’t know what was what.

“That was the aha moment,” said Lyndon Krause, Racquet Sports Equipment Manager for Tennis Australia. “Especially working with Sam. She literally said to us, after the first 10 shots with a new racquet: How was I using the other one for my whole career?”

Stosur was not alone. The research team found big improvements across the board. Players were using the wrong equipment for their games and for all the wrong reasons.

When they started working with high-level juniors at their national academies, the results were equally promising.

“Then we came to a realization: Why don’t we open this to the general public and offer it as a service?” said Krause. “Because if they’re it getting wrong at that top level, it’s probably even worse for everyone else.”

The concept of being fitted with equipment with the help of performance data is nothing new in sports. Golf has long used launch monitors (Trackman being a popular one) to measure markers such as ball speed, club path, spin rate, carry distance and shot dispersion to match players with clubs that best suit their particular swing.

Perception is trumped by cold, hard numbers.

But tennis has clung to more old-school methods when it comes to selecting equipment. Players are drawn to a racquet because they think they play well with it. The proof is more or less speculative rather than analytical.

However, a player’s feel is not always real.

“That’s why so many players are using the wrong racquets,” said Krause. “We want to move it from qualitative to quantitative.”

The first step when going through the Tennis Lab fitting is a pre-screening survey to capture vitals like age, height, gender, frequency and level of play. You also check off what you’re looking for in a new racquet such as power or spin, and if you have a favorite shot or weapon you want to target.

All that info gets analyzed by a computer algorithm and from the entire pool of about 180 racquets from all the major manufacturers—Tennis Lab is brand agnostic—it gets whittled down to around 30 that would be appropriate.

The team will then go through that list and manually edit it down to 10 to 12 options based on the player’s responses. Those racquets are prepared for the test trial. Each racquet has a 4 ¼ grip, is completely blacked out to eliminate color bias, and strung with Luxilon ALU Power at 50 lbs.

The player comes in and their current racquet’s specifications are taken, as well as some specific anthropometric measurements such as hand size and arm length. It’s mostly done for research purposes, but hand length is important for determining grip size, which might go up or down depending on stroke characteristics.

Then it’s the fun part—the player takes the court and hits a series of shots at a specific target. They start with their current racquet to form a baseline and work their way through all the test racquets. Ball speed, spin and shot control are the three primary benchmarks, with depth of shot a significant data point. There’s also another metric called shot-heaviness, which is a combination of speed and spin. After each racquet the player provides feedback on whether they felt the racquet was better or worse than theirs based on those criteria.

“We’re looking for high shot speed, high shot spin and ideally a really tight cluster of accuracy,” said Krause. “A denser cluster more toward the center of the target indicates they’re more consistent with the racquet.”

There are three levels of fittings. The fundamental fitting ($150 AUD) is 15 minutes of crosscourt forehands followed by 15 minutes of off-court analysis. The core fitting ($250 AUD) adds backhands and more time to the test. The premium fitting ($600 AUD) is the same service given to tour-level players and includes all the strokes and two hours of court time and analysis. Each level comes with a $100 AUD rebate towards the purchase of a new racquet.

After the on-court portion concludes, the data is presented in a report to the player along with racquet recommendations based off their performance scores. If something like power is a priority for the player, then racquets that score high in that category may jump ahead of other racquets that may actually have higher overall scores. It’s not uncommon, even among pro players, for their personal interpretations to be off the mark.

“We’ve got all these complex findings, but how do we make it really structured and really simple for anyone to understand,” said Krause. “Basically what we’re doing is contextualizing for players whether they’re making the right decision. ‘Hey my feel is telling me this,’ and we go: yup it is the same as what you’re feeling.”

Purchases can be made, but more often the player will take home a few of the options to give them a fuller test drive. The algorithm is smart enough to take the on-court hitting data with their off-court priorities to provide string recommendations as well. It’s not done on-court because there’s an almost infinite number of combinations.

Players can eventually also customize the racquet’s weight and swingweight to hone in on the perfect setup.

“The conversation doesn’t end there,” said Krause. “We keep iterating it to get it optimized for them as best as we can.”

It’s all word of mouth, but appointments at Tennis Lab are becoming more frequent. A project they’re hoping to tackle in the next six months is looking at creating a portable fitting. It will be a slightly different and less accurate experience without Hawk-Eye, but it’s still better than the alternative.

“Get 30 to 40 people through in a couple of hours,” said Krause. “That’s the end goal. And have that across every club in Australia. It’s a big goal, but I genuinely don’t think it’s that far off.”

Today Australia, perhaps someday worldwide.