Babolat Xcel
Can a looser string tension with soft strings increase the feel?
Hi guys,
I bought a Babolat Drive Z 105 4 days ago and I got the Babolat Xcel as its strings.
The employee there then asked me how tight I wanted my strings to be (and I wasn’t really used to string tension then) so I asked what the usual was and he said 55 then I asked about 60 but then he said that was too tight so I just got 56.
After that I looked at some reviews of the strings I bought.
The reviews seemed to be saying that the strings were soft (which seemed to answer why it had a great,soft feel but only at a certain spot).
So I was wondering, if I have soft strings and a loose string tension will it give more feel in more portions of the racket head?
No offense if you have played tennis for a long time but it seems you know very little about stringing your racket or your racket to begin with.
A lower tension actually takes away feel no matter how “soft” your strings are, higher tensions give you much more feel. A 56 string tension is extraordinarily low and is mainly for players who can’t generate nearly any power of their own and must rely on the strings. As for the “great, soft” feel you get, that is when you hit correctly in the sweet spot of the racket.
The reason why your stringer was reluctant to string it to a 60 (I bet he didn’t even mention this) was because your racket is purely a power orientated racket, the recommended string tension is only from 50 to 55. Going over that officially voids your warranty for the racket which means if the frame breaks even though you did not smash the racket, they will not pay for it to get fixed.
My tip would be for you to carefully research your rackets before jumping out to get one. If you did do research then I advise you to look more carefully at the Specifications of the racket as well. The strings weren’t the problem this time, it was the racket.