Nadal's Racket

Michael Flanigan | 17/2/22

Professional Players | Racket Tech | Strings

Rafael Nadal won his 21^st Grand Slam at the 2022 Australian Open, setting a new men’s tennis record with an unbelievable comeback from two sets down. Lets take a look at the racket that helps him win.

Strings:

For strings, Nadal uses – of course – Babolat RPM Blast. This is a tough polyester string built for durability and spin access. Playing with some of the heaviest topspin on tour, Nadal needs the durability of a full bed of polyester string and uses RPM Blast in the thickest gauge available, 1.35mm

Although, interestingly, for the 2022 Australian Open Nadal switched to the thinner 1.30mm gauge RPM Blast. This change would have offered slightly more spin and power, while compromising on durability along with some control. It’s likely he will switch back to the 1.35mm gauge for the harsher clay court season.

Before RPM Blast was introduced, Nadal used Babolat Duralast polyester strings. Like a lot of early polyester strings, they were designed purely for durability, performing very harshly and without the same spin access we see in polyester strings nowadays.

We should also note Nadal made the switch to a Luxilon string in 2016, before switching back to his RPM Blast setup the next year.

Nadal's Racket Specs and Why:

Despite the relatively low mass of 343 grams, Nadal’s custom racket has a very high swingweight of 367kg/cm^2, made possible by the large mass of lead weight placed in the tip of the racket. This moves the balance point very far up the racket (33.7cm), making the racket feel very head-heavy. While this makes the racket very challenging to handle, it helps provide the brutal power and spin Nadal plays with.

Currently, Nadal endorses the Babolat Pure Aero, but underneath the paintwork, he actually uses an old first generation Babolat AeroPro Drive Cortex from 2004.

A key difference between the modern Pure Aero and Nadal’s old AeroPro Drive is the much lower twistweight of the old racket (about 12.7kg/cm^2 compared to 15kg/cm^2) . This lower twistweight reduces the stability and sweetspot of the racket but favours maneuverability - in Nadal’s case allowing him to whip over the ball incredibly fast to generate topspin.

The low twistweight makes Nadal's racket very unforgiving, despite it's ample 100 square inch headsize, and this is reflected in Nadal's game. For example, Nadal's choice to return serve from very deep behind the baseline gives him extra time to "see" the approaching ball and hit the sweetspot, taking advantage of the high swingweight to hit the return with a full swing, deep into the opponents side of the court.

Nadal's goal with his game is to create as much topspin as possible, hence why he chooses a racket with a much lower twistweight. Another way he does this is by making use of a smaller grip size of L2 (4 1/4"). In fact, he chooses to use two overgrips instead of the usual replacement grip + overgrip combination in order to further reduce the grip size. This enables more spin to be generated, albeit making the racket much harsher to play with.

To conclude, Rafael Nadal’s racket is not for the faint of heart. The high swingweight and stiff string setup means it takes a great deal of strength and skill to play with this custom racket. We can learn from how these custom specifications optimise Nadal's unique playing style and apply this to the rackets we customise at Racket Services Ireland.

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