ProSetup: tuning the racquet you already own

ProSetup is not a racquet range. It is a tuning: we start from the frame you already own, measure what it actually is, and bring it to a stated target.

What a pro stock really is, and why its qualities can also be had on a new frame, is covered elsewhere.

What “set like a pro” actually means

Three numbers, not a story: total mass, balance, swingweight. A tour player almost never plays a frame straight out of the box; he plays a frame brought to a measured target, reproduced from one racquet to the next.

That target is what ProSetup applies, and it is verifiable: every racquet leaves with its measured figures, taken before and after.

What the tuning moves

Three numbers, but they are not independent. Adding mass at one point moves the balance and the swingweight at the same time, and not in the same proportion. Take a frame of 310 g, balanced at 32.0 cm and measured at 320 swingweight. Four grams placed at the tip, 66 cm from the butt, bring it to 32.43 cm of balance and 332.5 of swingweight: the racquet carries far more through the ball, and you have to be able to swing it. The same four grams placed in the handle, at 12 cm, bring the balance to 31.75 cm and leave the swingweight exactly where it was, at 320.0: more mass and more stability, at no cost to timing. A gram has no value in itself. It only has one in a place — and that is the whole job: choosing the place.

Matching, the difference you can feel

A player alternating two racquets in a match needs them identical — not “the same model”: identical. Two examples of the same retail model, bought on the same day, can differ by several grams and several points of swingweight. That is manufacturing tolerance, and it is normal. It is not corrected by shopping: it is corrected by measuring and weighting. That is what matching does to your two frames — and it is also why our own racquets are tuned to order, to a tenth of a gram, rather than sorted: tolerance is not something you put up with, it is something you remove. The arithmetic is in the weight, balance and swingweight guide.

What it does not do

A ProSetup does not change your forehand and adds no level. It removes one variable: the one that makes a racquet answer differently from another without anyone knowing why. Less spectacular than a promise, and considerably more useful.

Having yours tuned

The setup follows from your physique and your racquet-head speed: the configurator works it out in six questions, and the X, Y, Z grid says which hitting axis you come in on. The work itself is ordered on the ProSetup tuning page: measured before, corrected, measured after, figures handed back with the racquet.

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