Stiff frames buy power and bill your wrist

The frames that feel effortless in a shop hand the shock the racquet did not absorb straight up the forearm.

Pick up two racquets in a shop and one of them will feel like it does the work for you. Light, wide beam, high stiffness rating, ball leaves quickly with a short swing. That is a real effect and it is why those frames sell. The bill arrives later and it does not arrive at the frame.

The mechanism is not mysterious. When a ball hits the stringbed, some energy goes back into the ball, some goes into deforming the strings, and some goes into flexing the frame, which then dissipates it as vibration and heat. A stiff frame flexes less. That returns more to the ball, which is the selling point, and it also means the impact shock has fewer places to go, so more of it travels through the handle into the hand, wrist and forearm.

Pair that with a light frame and it gets worse, because a light head decelerates more on impact, and the shock the player feels is roughly about that change in momentum. Light and stiff is the combination sold hardest to the exact group least able to absorb it, which is the recreational player over forty with a short swing and no strength programme.

Add modern polyester string, which is also stiff and low powered, and you have three unforgiving components in series. Plenty of club players are playing a full poly bed in a wide beam frame because a professional does, without noticing that the professional has a heavier racquet, a longer swing, and a physiotherapist.

I would not tell anybody that a frame causes tennis elbow. Technique, volume and grip size all matter more, and a late backhand hit with a bent leading arm will hurt you in any equipment. But equipment shifts the odds, and among the choices a player makes without advice, this is the one with the clearest downside.

The cheap corrective is not a new racquet. Take the poly out and put a multifilament or a soft blend in, or at least a hybrid, and drop the tension a few pounds. Then add a little lead at the head and in the handle if the frame is very light. It will feel less crisp for a week.

If the frame is doing all the work, something else in the chain is absorbing what it declined to.