Tennis racquets are an extension of a player’s arm, and because of that, you’ll often find pros playing with racquets that are decades older than the racquets they endorse.

They are so reluctant to switch things up because that adaptation time isn’t worth the marginal difference in performance they can get from the latest technology.

Of course, once the tennis world discovered that pros play with different racquets, everyone wanted to test those rackets, but it’s easier said than done. Older racquets are hard to find and can be extremely expensive, especially when endorsed by a top 10 player.

But I’m always up for a challenge, and that got me thinking: what if I could find some of the world’s best players’ actual racquets and compare them to the retail racquets they endorse?

That raises the question: who are the best players in the world right now? This will never be unanimous, but in my opinion, the four best men’s players right now are Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, and Alexander Zverev. Sinner may be banned, but he’s the best in the world. Alcaraz has been a bit inconsistent lately, but he’s still winning Masters 1000s willy-nilly. Djokovic is Djokovic — he made the semis of his last Grand Slam, and until he calls it quits, he can beat anyone on any day. Zverev may be a level below these three, but he’s better than the rest, which is why I think he’s the comfortable fourth-best player.

All four of these players use different racquets with varying degrees of rarity, so collecting their frames was certainly not an easy task, but fun nonetheless. Once I found the racquets, the next step was to customize them to their exact specs. Pro player specs are fairly easy to find nowadays on forums or on websites like Tennisnerd.

I decided to set up the pros’ actual racquets exactly the way they do — with the same weight and balance, the same strings and tension — but for the retail racquets, I only matched the strings. This would allow me to conduct the test independently of string setup, so I could see how the different frames and weight specs affect playability.

Pros are known for using very odd balance points with extremely high static or swing weights (and sometimes both), so I had to tap deep into my racquet tech skills to match them as well as I could. Once I finally did have them matched, I took the eight racquets out to the court and had a blast testing them against each other.

I was initially supposed to make one video with all four of the racquets, but the results were so interesting that I ended up cutting it into two. I started my comparison with Sinner’s and Alcaraz’s.

Sinner endorses the Head Auxetic 2.0 Speed MP and actually uses a Speed MP from 2016: the Graphene Touch Speed MP. Other than technology, these racquets are pretty similar, but Sinner’s Speed has a 22-millimetre beam, while the current Speed has a 23-millimetre beam. Sinner’s racquet weighs 325 grams with a 340 swing weight and a 33.3 centimetre balance — high specs, but not unmanageable like some of the others’, and this is the racquet I was most excited to test. He does string it with full poly at a really high tension, which worried me a little bit, but it wasn’t actually as bad as those numbers make it seem.

Alcaraz endorses the current Babolat Pure Aero 98, and up until about four months ago, you could have taken that racquet off the shelf, strung it with RPM 16 at 55/53 pounds, and you would’ve had his real setup. It’s kind of crazy to think that he was using a stock racquet during his first few years on tour — that’s very rare for a pro — and it seems that his team thought so too, because he customised it during the off-season. He added 5 grams of weight in the throat, which bumped the swing weight up by two points to 325, the static weight up to 333 grams, and the balance stayed the same at 32.4 centimetres. He also changed his string this year from RPM Blast 16 to RPM Team 16. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to RPM Team, so I just used Blast.

I was really excited to test both of these racquets because they’re actually very manageable specs considering what pros usually use, and you can cut to 03:19 in the video below to see what I had to say.

Needless to say, I was pretty much dumbfounded by how well Sinner’s and Alcaraz’s racquets played. Of course, they were more difficult to use than the retail versions, but not impossible like I feared.

Having already seen their specs, I knew Djokovic and Zverev would pose me a few more problems. Zverev endorses the Head Auxetic 2.0 Gravity Pro and has actually been using a Gravity Pro since it first came out in 2019. In 2025, he decided to make a change to the Head Gravity Tour, which has a 22-millimetre beam instead of the paper-thin 20-millimetre beam on the Pro.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing this article, he has switched back to the Gravity Pro which is a bit surprising, because he made it to the Australian Open final with the Tour. But I had already tested his setup before he switched back, so I am going forward with it anyway. Zverev strings his racquet with Head Hawk Touch in the mains, VS Touch 16 (natural gut) in the crosses at 24/25 kilos. His racquet weighs 343 grams with a very high 360 swing weight and 33 centimetre balance.

Djokovic endorses the Head Speed Legend Pro, but actually uses a very different racquet; of the four players here, this is the biggest gap between pro and retail frame. Getting Djokovic’s actual mould is nearly impossible, because Head has never actually produced the racquet for consumers on a large scale.

It’s a Head pro stock code PT 346.1, and the closest retail frames to that pro stock are the Liquidmetal Radical and Ti Radical. I have both, but think that the Ti is slightly closer to the PT 346.1 layup, so that’s the one I decided to customise and string at his exact spec: 353 grams, with a 360 swing weight and a 32.4 centimetre balance — massive weight specs for the average player like myself. But I was excited to test a proper pro player racquet like this. Now, unfortunately, Djokovic is using an 18x19 string pattern, which Head drills specifically for him — the retail Ti Radical came stock with an 18x20, which is what I had to use. He strings it with VS Touch 16 in the mains at 27 kilos and Alu Rough in the crosses at 26 kilos.

Again, you can skip to 01:44 to watch the full comparison and come back to the article for a comprehensive debrief of my findings.

Hopefully you enjoyed watching those two videos — and there are certainly a few themes that stuck out.

Even if pros do play with racquets similar to what they endorse, the racquets really aren’t that close — except for in the case of Alcaraz. Djokovic’s and Zverev’s racquets show that pros can handle extremely high weight specs, and that in the right hands, high weight specs are very useful. They produce a heavier and more consistent ball; however, I couldn’t swing the racquets effectively for more than 10 minutes. For those 10 minutes, though, it was really fun, because in a way, they make tennis easier — they amplify every part of your game, so it’s easier to push your opponent around.

That also made me wonder how Alcaraz can compete against these guys when he’s using something so much lighter. Don’t get me wrong — the Aero 98 is one of the most impressive racquets in stock form, and the changes he made this year definitely make it a bit more “pro” — but still, nothing compares to that extra swing weight crushing into the ball.

The other thing that’s been really cool with these setups is trying to mimic the way these guys actually play to see how the racquet complements that style. The Speed has that wristy Sinner feel to it, the Aero just feels right with a straight-arm forehand, and the other two are deadly racquets on the backhand.

The number one thing we need to gather from this test is that yes, we can take inspiration from pro player setups, but we certainly shouldn’t copy them exactly. To control these high-weight specs, you need perfect timing, footwork, and technique — and that’s something really only the pros can do.

Hopefully you enjoyed this article. I know it was a little bit different from what we usually do. If you want to try any of the retail racquets we talked about today, you can come demo them in-store — or, if you want to, you can buy them online.