Babolat Pure Aero Rafa Origin

It’s not quite tennis weather yet (in fact, while I’m writing this, we’ve got pretty high winds and horrible rain!) but why not plan ahead for when the weather has calmed down a bit and you can get back out on that court? Babolat have pretty much been around since the beginning of Tennis, coming up with the first natural guts strings for racquets a short while after the rules as we know them were devised for lawn tennis (almost 150 years ago!) so it’s safe to say that they’ve got a pretty good idea with what they’re doing – and they dropped the gut strings a while back! They only started making actual racquet frames about 30 years ago but the player that helped with the design of this racquet has been using Babolat racquets and strings for his whole career (Rafael Nadal in case you didn’t guess from the name!) and it focuses on those things that gave him such a lasting legacy.

The design features a more widely-spaced string pattern than you get on many racquet designs and is combined with a stiff, head-heavy frame that creates more tension in the strings, offering the hard-hitting kind of stroke that Nadal is famed for and allowing you to keep your opponent at the back of the court with a little less effort than normal. As well as this, the stability of the head gives you more freedom to work with the ball and the Woofer System design of the strings keeps the ball in contact with the strings for longer allowing you to get more spin where you need it.

It all leads to a satisfying thwack sending the ball back to your opponent exactly how you want it to get there. It’s not quite as heavy as you may expect from the head-heavy frame too at 317 grams so still giving you that reassuring heft in your hand without tiring you out too quickly.

RRP £289.99

4 out of 5

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