Tennis Rackets & Maintenance - How to measure a tennis racket

Hi, my name is Lincoln Ward. I'm the director of the Austin Tennis Center here in Austin, Texas as well as a USPTA Certified Teaching Pro. Today we're going to talk about to measure your tennis racket. There's a bunch of different measurements you need when you're talking about your tennis racket. Generally the length of your racket from your head to the butt plate is about twenty seven and a half inches. A few years back in the late eighties had an extended tennis racket which was about an inch longer to help create a better height and power for him on the tour. These rackets were made in large scale, but now days players generally stick to the twenty seven and a half inch racket. The face of your racket is also an important measurement to have. They're generally broken down into twenty... or mid, plus and oversize heads, and they're generally ninety square inches, ninety five square inches and a hundred and ten. The balance of your racket is important to measure as well. That will help you determine if your racket is head heavy or handle heavy or center balanced. You can either set it on your finger or on a balanced surface on a table and move your racket up or down to where you find it balancing perfectly. A center balanced racket will generally balance right here in the center of the neck of the handle. The further up you have to move the racket, the more head heavy that racket is. The further down you move your racket, the more handle heavy the racket is. As far as the grip, that's important to measure as well. You don't actually measure the actual circumference of the grip. The grip has a number as the bottom and that number is either four and a half, four and three eighths, four and a quarter, and that you can determine by your hand. Most people generally have three ridges on their hand. If you start of on the middle ridge, and you measure from there straight up in between your pointer... your ring finger and your middle finger up to the top of your ring finger, that area or that length from the middle crease to the top of your ring finger is generally about four to four and a half inches and that's where they get that number on the bottom of your racket. That's how you measure your tennis racket.