When I was 12, my father took me to visit New York City. The highlight of the trip was purchasing my ?rst and only Rolex from a street vendor. It cost $10. I showed it off at school to my friends, who were suitably awestruck. But a day later, one classmate, who later confessed to consulting his father, grabbed my wrist and pronounced, “A real Rolex doesn’t tick.” I was exposed.
These days, thanks mainly to eBay, it doesn’t take a trip to Chinatown to buy designer knockoffs. But most buyers know what they’re getting when they pay cut-rate prices. Tennis racquets, however, are an exception. In recent years, counterfeiters have been peddling counterfeit frames to unsuspecting buyers, offering popular models at cheaper prices to appeal to bargain seekers.
“In some cases the fake racquets are lousy, and you can spot them just from looking at the picture,” says Jon Muir, general manager of Wilson Racquet Sports. “Others do a better job, but then if you look closely at the cosmetics and [check] the weight, you can still detect the difference pretty easily.”
Racquet counterfeiting first came to Wilson’s attention in 2005 after it introduced its nCode line. “People would send us racquets that they bought on eBay, and they were fakes,” Muir says. The company hired an outside agency to monitor websites for fake racquets and retained a Hong Kong law firm to target illicit manu-facturers in Southeast Asia, where most counterfeits originate.
Detective work might not be required down the line, however. If racquet technology continues to advance, knockoffs, even poor imitations, will prove too dif? cult for counterfeiters to manufacture. It’s already happening. “With the introduction of our O3 technology, we no longer have seen counterfeits of our most popular racquets,” says Doug Fonte, president of Prince Americas. The company’s O3 line features large holes along the sides of the frame. “These are too dif? cult to copy,” he says. “You can’t just take a frame and drill holes in it, or it’ll fall apart.”
In rare instances, frames are stolen from companies’ manufacturing facilities and sold without authorization. Also, racquet companies’ “seeding samples”—the models they give to tennis pros and sales representatives—occasionally end up on eBay. But at least in these instances, the consumer isn’t getting shortchanged.
Sometimes counterfeiters go straight to retailers. “Three years ago, we found out that counterfeiters were approaching some of our retailers, posing as retailers themselves and saying they had a surplus of racquets to get rid of,” says Greg Mason, senior director of sales for Head/Penn Racquet Sports. “Thankfully, our retailers approached us, and we were able to put an end to it.”
The best way to ensure that you don’t purchase a counterfeit racquet is to shop at an authorized online dealer. But if you’re determined to buy on auction sites, Wilson’s Muir warns you should be especially wary of products originating in Southeast Asia. Also, it’s the most popular recently released racquets that are being counterfeited. “Typically, the fakes appear at least several months after a new line is introduced, once the counterfeiters get a handle on which are the most popular racquets,” Mason says.
If you’re searching for a racquet that hasn’t been produced in years, auction sites are relatively safe and perhaps the only place to find them. But if you’re just looking to save a few bucks on a new model, be cautious. “Make sure you pay attention to all the details, since most counterfeit jobs are little more than a paint job,” Mason says. “For example, look at the rubber band at the top of the grip. Most counterfeiters don’t go to the trouble of molding the company logo onto the rubber.”
But even if the cosmetics are spot on, it’s the performance that counts. Unlike a Rolex, tennis racquets are not status items. And until the day when Prince introduces a specialty line of diamond encrusted frames—perhaps to be endorsed by Maria Sharapova—there’s little bene?t in buying a fake.
