Author: Racquet Network Staff

Racquet Network staff are certified experts. Many are also certified coaches. Racquet Network Experts undergo extensive training and product knowledge testing in order to ensure that we have the most knowledgeable staff in the racquet sports industry.
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Save Money with Pressureless Tennis Balls

BABOLAT ACADEMY PRESSURELESS TENNIS BALLS
Save money. Use pressureless tennis balls.
As you can imagine, we spend a LOT of time hanging around tennis courts. Therefore, we spend a lot of time watching recreational tennis players. And as a result of this, we can tell you that most recreational players are playing with the wrong tennis balls.

We are not talking about color coding here. That’s a different issue. We are talking about regular players playing with regular tennis balls. Most of them are wasting their money and wasting their time playing with regular, pressurized tennis balls.

Regular tennis balls come in a can. That can is pressurized to 15 lbs per square inch over ambient air pressure. This is why it sounds like a soda when you pop the seal and open a new can of balls.

Just as a soda starts going flat the from the moment you open the can, tennis balls start going flat, too. From the moment you open the can, the balls inside start losing pressure. If you drop a new ball when you first open the can, it will bounce up to your belly button. Wait just two weeks and the same ball — even if it sits unused in your bag — will only bounce up to your knee.

This is because as soon as you open the can, the balls start losing air pressure and begin returning to balance with their new environment. Here in Calgary, this means that new tennis balls lose about 50 per cent of their bounce in about a week — even if you don’t use them.

Unless you are playing several times per week, pressureless tennis balls are not a wise way to spend your money. As we said above, even if you don’t use them, they will quickly go flat in your bag. A much better way to go is to purchase pressureless balls. Pressureless balls never lose their bounce. You can leave them in your bag all winter and they will bounce the same in the spring.

Pressureless balls use new materials technology to maintain their bounce. And contrary to popular belief, pressureless balls do not weigh any more or less than standard pressurized tennis balls. Today in our store, for example, we weighed six different models of pressurized and pressureless balls and all weighed exactly the same — 58 grams.

So unless you are tournament player who has to be accustomed to a very specific ball, there are almost no good reasons to be using old fashioned and expensive pressurized tennis balls.

Babolat ™ Academy balls are available in our southwest Calgary store. They can be purchased individually or in money-saving multiples. They are designed for use in teaching programs and ball machines, so they are extremely durable and long lasting. For most infrequent players, this is the best way to go.

We also offer a range of pressureless tennis balls for children, teens and adult beginners.

Pressureless Tennis Balls for All Ages

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Help! My Feet are Blistering

For a shoe fitting expert, information about blistering is excellent because it sends a clear signal about what is wrong with the fit of the shoe.

Unfortunately, this awesome information is often tied to equally bad information firmly planted it the customer’s mind about what is causing the blistering. When this happens, it can make it a difficult issue to correct.

Here is the truth about blistering.

Where your feet are blistering will usually indicate what is causing the blisters.

Blistering on the heel, for example, is caused by shoes that are too short. Court shoes that are the correct length will be loose enough in the back not to cause blistering on the heel.

Blistering on the outside of the foot or the side of either the big toe or the little toe is usually caused by shoes that are too narrow.

If blistering in these places is also accompanied by bruised or blackened toenails, then the shoe is to short as well as too narrow.

Blistering on the sole of the foot can be caused by shoes that are too big, but it is most often caused by damp cotton.

Wet skin is weak skin. Weak skin tears. So if you developed a large blister on your forefoot that splits open late in a match, the first thing you should check is your socks.

Wet socks weaken your skin and make it susceptible to tearing.

Either buy some polyester socks or change your cotton socks frequently during your match. Keeping your feet dry is the first step in avoiding skin tears.

We strongly recommend that players with friction issues carry a tube of Body Glide and a tube of Anbesol. The glide can be applied to areas of known friction. The Anbesol can take the sting out of blisters that are starting to develop.

Yonex Men’s Badminton Shoes

A small random selected of our Yonex men’s badminton shoes

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I Keep Busting Through My Tennis Shoes

T22 Lite Mens
Compared to running shoes, tennis shoes look clunky. But there is a reason for that.
“Help,” says Mark on the phone. “I keep busting through my tennis shoes.”

“OK,” we reply. “Come into the store and we’ll see what we can do to help you.”

Two days later he brings his shoes in for a look and we immediately see the problem. Mark is playing tennis in running shoes, not tennis shoes.

“The reason you keep busting through the sides of your shoes,” we explain to him, “is they are not tennis shoes.”

You see, Mark went to a big box store and told the staff that he wanted a super light tennis shoe. From what he told us, it sounds like he tried on the only tennis shoe they had, but he thought it was too clunky. He said he wanted something more like his running shoes. So they sold him exactly what he asked for. They sold him a running shoe.

That’s when Mark’s problems started. Running shoes are not designed for side to side movement. They are designed for forward movement only. So when Mark goes out wide to return a ball and has to push off sideways back to the center of the court, he eventually rips the seams on the outside of his running shoes.

It’s not the shoe’s fault. It is a running shoe. Running shoes are not designed for side-to-side movement. They are designed for forward movement only. Therefore Mark can’t make a warranty claim because he is using the shoes in way that they should not be used. In other words, the manufacturer is not at fault.

Part of the fault lies with the box store employee who sold Mark running shoes. But most of the fault lies with Mark.

You see, Mark is a bit of a princess. He is more concerned with the colour and the look of his shoe than he is with the shoe’s performance. He thinks that the most important characteristic of a tennis shoe is that it matches his outfit. He also thinks that tennis shoes are too “clunky looking.” He wants a tennis shoe that looks like a running shoe.

What Mark is learning, though, is that compared to running shoes, tennis shoes are clunky looking for a reason. He is learning that tennis shoes are subject to much higher stresses than running shoes. Therefore they have to be reinforced on the sides, on the toe and on the sole.

Mark is also learning that tennis shoes are typically both cheaper than and more durable than running shoes. For example, the Asics ™ Nimbus 20s that he keeps busting through retail for $200.00 a pair while the Prince ™ T22s that he should be playing in are just $140.00. When used for tennis, his expensive running shoes will last four or five weeks at most while the tennis shoes would last an entire season.

Unfortunately, it’s an expensive lesson that Mark is insisting on learning the hard way. We expect that he will eventually realize that playing tennis in tennis shoes will not only save him money, it will also make him a better tennis player. But today is not that day.

Men’s Tennis Shoes

A small sample of our mens tennis shoes.

Shoe Selector For a full list of shoes in this category, please check out our ONLINE SHOE SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, width and price.
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Choosing Racquets: Do Brands Matter?

Hammers

Racquet Network has been helping customers choose racquets since 2004. Over the years, we have seen thousands of frames (and thousands of features) come and go. One year the, hot feature is a “flex point”. The next year it’s “titanium”. The year after that, it’s “recessed grommet technology”.

The truth is that some of these hot features are genuine technological innovations but most of them, unfortunately, are just marketing pitches. Every manufacturer wants you to believe that their frame is special. If you believe it is special, you will want to buy it. Therefore they are constantly tweaking their frames and adding features in order to swing more customers their way.

Sadly, too many customers fall for the marketing. Equally sad is the fact that so many customers buy particular racquets just because they are endorsed by celebrity athletes.

Racquets are like hammers. They are tools designed to accomplish specific tasks. If you are building a house, you want to use claw hammer. If you are shaping metal, you want a ball peen hammer. If you are breaking up concrete, you want a sledge hammer. But whether your hammer is made by Stanley, Craftsman or Dewalt is not really important. All three of these companies make all three of these hammers. Picking the right tool for the job matters much more than the brand.

The same is true for racquets. Wilson ™, Babolat ™, Head, Yonex ™ and Tecnifibre ™ all make tennis racquets. They make racquets for casual players, they make racquets for recreational players and they make racquets for professionals. All of these companies make racquets for doubles and racquets for singles. And they all make racquets that work for both.

At Racquet Network, we focus on carrying brands that are very well made. We avoid junk brands. We avoid brands who spend their money on celebrity endorsements and favor brands who spend their money on research and development. By doing this, we ensure a high level of satisfaction amongst our customers. In other words, we do this because we want happy customers who come back over and over again.

Just as hammers are tools, racquets are containers for string. Picking the right frame for the job (singles, doubles or both) is important, but it’s only half the battle. Once you have the right frame, you have to customize it to your playing style and frequency. Nothing breaks our hearts faster than watching a customer spend $300 on a racquet only to have it strung with $10.00 string. We would much rather see customers spend $200 on the frame and $40.00 on good string.

Brand, as we said earlier, is not the most important consideration in choosing a racquet. Nor is a celebrity endorsement. Our staff are trained to ask new customers a series of questions in order to narrow things down to the proper category in just few minutes. Once we have the category right, we find something in the right grip size. After that, we pick out a few frames to consider in detail.

Once the frame is in hand, we start the process of customizing it for our customers. First we ask a series of questions that help us figure out what the customer wants or needs the string to do. Once we have that information we pick out three strings at three different price points and consider them in more detail.

At the end of the process, we are certain that the customer has a frame suited to their general needs that is precisely customized for their particular needs as a player. This is true whether customers play tennis, squash, badminton or racquetball. And it is for this reason above all that we have the highest overall rate of customer satisfaction in Calgary.

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Do I need to Replace my Prince Tennis Racquet?

PRINCE O3 BEAST 100 (300) TENNIS FRAME
Bring your Prince racquet into our store for an expert assessment.
My Prince ™ tennis racquet is old. Do I need to replace it? It’s a question we hear every week from customers with racquets that are sometimes older than our staff.

In more than half of the cases the answer is no. An old racquet is not necessarily a bad racquet just as a new racquet is not necessarily a good racquet.

If you are comfortable with a racquet and you play well with it, why change it? As long as the strings are replaced and the grip is maintained, the racquet can stay in service for years.

All of that starts to change when one of two things happens: either the bumper guard is damaged or grommets start breaking off. When either of these two things happen, the racquet will start to damage its own strings. Eventually, this can turn a trusted old friend into a nasty old string eater that costs a fortune to maintain.

At this point, your best course of action is either to replace the worn out parts or to replace the racquet. And since it is impossible to get parts for old Prince tennis racquets, the only realistic option is to replace the racquet.

Fortunately, we offer a Try One Before You Buy One program that allows customers to test drive a variety of racquets for a month. At the end of the month, they can choose a new racquet that they feel comfortable with.

So when the time comes to retire an old friend, come into our southwest Calgary store and talk to an expert. We can help you find a friendly new racquet that will be with you for the next two decades.

Prince Tennis Racquets

Racquet Selector For a full list of racquets in this category, please check out our ONLINE RACQUET SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, weight, balance and more.