Best Tennis Rackets For Beginner Players (2023 Guide)

What Should You be Looking for from the Best Beginner Tennis Racket?

As a beginner, you’re taking your first steps in tennis and building the basic technique that’s going to help you progress your game.

The key ingredient here is that the racket’s easy to play with.

If you’re trying to play with a heavy racket then it makes it so much harder to learn the correct techniques, and you’re not going to see many benefits.

Instead, you want a racket that focuses on maneuverability and comfort whilst also giving you the performance you need.

One thing to remember here is that the beginner racket you end up with is probably going to be quite different from what the pros are using on TV.

While it might be tempting to think “Oh if it works for Federer then it has to work for me,” it’s not going to be the case, and instead, you need to find the racket that fits you at this moment in time.

Hopefully, your tennis will progress quickly and you will soon be looking for the best intermediate racket, but if you make the right decision on your beginner racket, then it should last you even as you continue to improve your strokes.

Weight

The weight of your racket is one of the most important ingredients. If your racket is too heavy or too light, then it won’t just affect your performance, but it can also lead to injuries that keep you off the court.

In general, slightly lighter rackets will suit beginner players better as they’re easier to swing and can help you get power and spin from more limited strokes.

However, this is also going to depend on your level of strength, and ideally, you want to find a racket that feels comfortable in your hands, and that you can swing comfortably.

Racket companies sometimes tout the super lightweight beginner rackets, but lighter isn’t always better.

You can swing faster, but the lack of weight in the frame will restrict you from improving your power levels, so they’re not necessarily great rackets to move your game forward with.

Instead, you want to find a balance that suits you. For the majority of people, we would suggest this is somewhere between 270-300g unstrung.

Head Size

Head size might not be quite as important as weight, but it’s another option you’ve got.

Tennis rackets come in lots of different shapes and sizes, and you can get some with small heads (97 sq inch and lower) and others with very large heads (up to around 112 sq inch).

Just like with weight though, there is a tradeoff, and there’s not necessarily one size that’s best.

With a small head, you tend to get good control and feel, but the obvious difficulty is that you’ve got a much smaller area to aim for.

A very large head on the other hand is going to have a big sweet spot, and offer easy power, and spin, but the control can be lacking.

When you’re choosing the best tennis racket for beginners, we find the right option is something in the middle.

The idea of a 112 sq inch head might be nice, but for the most part, it’s not necessary.

With a 98-104 sq inch racket, you will have plenty of string to hit the ball with, and you will get a good balance of power, spin, and control.

Once again, it’s going to boil down to what you feel comfortable with, but you want something that gives you a good balance and is going to give you the performance you need as you continue to improve.

Power vs Control

This is something we talk about a lot because it’s not as straightforward as it might seem.

When you’re a beginner, you want a racket that’s going to give you a little power boost from your swings, but the more you develop your game, the more you are going to take responsibility for generating power yourself (instead of the racket).

As this happens, you will start to rely more and more on the control of the racket to help you tame the power you’re generating.

This is one of the reasons why we don’t recommend beginner players going simply for the most “powerful” racket.

You want to develop your game so your strokes are creating the power, which means working on fast, full swings.

If you’ve got a rocket launcher in your hands, then it’s much more difficult to continue to maximize your swings without hitting the back fence.

TheTennisBros.com’s Best Beginner Rackets

So, we’ve already mentioned we don’t really believe in “best” rackets, but we do have a few favorites which we find work well for players looking for certain characteristics.

Because we think all beginner tennis rackets should have a strong focus on maneuverability, we’ve included that as a given, but we’ve broken things down further so we have rackets for people looking for power, spin, or an all-round playing style.

Best Beginner Tennis Rackets for Power

As we’ve mentioned, control vs power is quite complicated. However, these rackets can help you get “easy power” and an extra boost from your strokes as they are now.

Best Beginner Tennis Rackets for Spin

At the end of the day, spin comes from your strokes, but there are rackets that can help you get that little bit more spin out of your shots.

All of these rackets are nice and easy to play with, but they’ve got that extra emphasis on spin that can be helpful for beginner players.

Best Beginner Tennis Rackets for All-Rounders

If you’re looking for a racket that gives you a perfect middle ground, then look no further than these great beginner rackets.

Tennis Rackets for Beginners: Takeaways

There are lots of great beginner tennis rackets out there, but it’s important you find the one that suits you.

There’s no one best tennis racket for beginners – it’s a question of finding what fits you.

The weight is the key aspect that you want to get right, so it’s always a good idea to try and demo a racket if you can.

This way you get to see how it feels on your swings and make sure it’s a good fit.

Performance-wise, we always find it’s quite easy to get carried away with promises of huge power and spin from racket companies.

However, if you’re going to improve your game in all areas, then it’s just as beneficial to have a solid, all-round racket that ticks a lot of boxes.

Power and spin aren’t everything, and ultimately, you want to develop your strokes so you generate these characteristics yourself.

To do this, you need to have some control from your racket, and this is one of the reasons we believe that more often than not a “middle ground” is the best option.

We’ve picked out some of our favorite “middle ground” beginner rackets and shown you the strengths, now it’s up to you to pick out your best beginner tennis racket.

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