i've never seen so many player's-level sticks going for 100 and less in my life.

the head mid/midplus stuff from the liquidmetal radical to the djokovic speed ones are worth twice what they're getting blown out for. obviously, buy some lead tape for applying at 9/3 o'clock on the sides and then popping the cap off the bottom and leading or using plain silicone caulk to keep it headlight is going to give you an approximation of what's generally done to nadal/djokovic/etc's actual raquets, nobody plays with a sub-12oz one, too unstable.

any version of the classic prince graphite, especially the 100sq inch one is nasty. the yonex tours, 100-200 series are also really fucking good.

if you've played a lot, the 88inch prostaff by wilson(i've had about six of the old kevlar 85's) are heavy, 20-year old designs but also probably the best ever made. if you play a lot, it's a scalpel, otherwise you'll be happier with one of the mid-plus heads or princes or wilson's 98" line.

anyhow, thought i'd give the heads up, never seen as much good product being cleared out at once. great use of a hundred bucks if it's your deal

haven't played tennis in over a year. since i've lived in la, i've taken tennis lessons or played with a friend. but as much as i like it, i don't love it like i thought i would; therefore no tenacity to make me a consistent enough of a player so i could get beyond a level 2. and the points are confusing.

When I was a kid, like 4th or 5th grade, my best friend at the time tried to show me tennis. I went with him, his mom and his older sister. On the first serve, his mom hit the ball hard and wild and she nailed me dead in the balls while I was standing on the side of the court near the net post. I fell down and started dry heaving. My friend and his sister laughed hysterically till his mom yelled at me and told me to stop over reacting and walk it off. I couldn't do anything but when she yelled both of the other kids stopped laughing and looked at her like she was a fucking monster. Later that night the mom called and apologized profusely. She claimed that she thought she just hit me in the leg. I found out later the story was told around their dinner table to their dad and the sister told her mom she hit me in the balls. My friend's dad blew a gasket at dinner over them laughing and especially over his wife yelling at me and telling me to walk it off. For years after that I was treated like an honored guest at their house. It still didn't stop me from flattening the mother's car tires a few times a year till high school. That was the last time I ever attempted to play tennis.

points are basically for putting doubles games together at clubs and a vague idea of who's a potential playing partner.

i basically got dropped off from six-13 at a day camp with a couple of serious kids/parents and as much of an emphasis on tennis as you wanted to make it. tagged along to some nelta stuff with the overbearing parent-crowd and a half-dozen or so(mostly losses) sanctioned matches was like 82 in u-14 for new england. then went to boarding school and didn't step on a court. five or six private lessons later if you went by numbers i'd have probably run around my backhand and shanked the ball into the rafters i'd have been a two, muscle memory kicks in and after a blitzkrieg of just hitting thousands of balls i can play with a guy who was second singles in d3, whatever that means in terms of numbers i've no idea.

if you find a pro who's cool with you dictating that you don't care about getting better by the end of the day, but just figuring out the mechanics of what it feels like to swing right at the edge of control and start getting a few balls in that's how you get much better not incrementally. it'll be ugly at first, but group lessons aren't how you figure out how to take balls on the rise and just how much topspin it takes to keep the ball in the court hitting hard.

the other thing is watching a bunch of 3.5 guys isn't going to give you any sense of how things SHOULD look. watch a few rounds at roland garros this spring, see the way they use the court's angles and dimensions, watch murray, nadal, the joker, nalbandian, etc swing and go hit some balls. you'll be better through osmosis. find the 99 wimbledon finals, mac in 84, federer from 06, watch them and try to emulate something about how they can move someone around the court from their centerline, how a kicked-to-hell second serve drops, etc. you can't see it at a club or clinic, but it'll be in your head as to what "looks right"

oh, you want to do the opposite of what you'd think with equipment. a powerful 110+square inch frame is going to put more balls over the net off the rack and it's going to be more encouraging. but you're learning how to push the ball not hit it because it's too forgiving, the string pattern's too tight to ever hit real spin with and eventually you're going to have weird cut-off strokes. gateway drug. may as well slam it, you don't see oversize widebodies on the tour, do you?

most of them are head-heavy, which means the weight is at the top of the thing which means you'll never hit a serve right because flat, slice, or kick-every serve relies on you being able to snap or roll your wrist over the ball quickly as part of the motion.

so head-light is what you want, not initially going to do work for you at the baseline, but if you watch nadal(mortals really shouldn't emulate most of his game, but he's going to be visible for an example) hit a forehand, the amount of action you see as his wrist breaks over the ball basically requires that the weight's all centered towards his hand not the tip of the stick)

no pro since maybe that stiff todd martin in the 90's has used anything head-heavy for a reason and most of them lead the fuck out of already headlight ones to make them easier to flick and brush at the ball with. the thing sampras and federer's evolved into is strongly headlight, the heads agassi and djok as well as the babolats nadal and roddick use are bigger in headsize but both very head light. and the prince original graphites are also weighted the same.

just rent a ball machine, get a few private lessons and a mid-midplus "player's" frame and fucking swing away, you'll hit enough to realize "i should repeat that shit" you'll end up with a real serve, groundstrokes with enough spin to be heavy hitting back on the other side of the court, and shit like developing the ability to realize if someone guns one say, to your backhand but close enough you'd want to get a step away from it to use topspin returning it, you can be lazy if you develop some cheese, which would be not running but just hitting it one handed with backspin/slice and slowing things down. instead of giving them more power to work with like you would have, they've gotta deal with underspin first, then figuring out how if they can make an offensive shot out of the thing. graf, sampras, edberg, federer are all perfect examples of how to mess with the heads of someone who might be a better pure baseliner than you, especially to the backhand.

so get something with an open string pattern like 18x20 and headlight. probably closer to 100 inches than 90, strings are subjective but not totally, happy to elaborate