I often rant about quality control in my racquet reviews, but over my years of play-testing, I have been impressed by Yonex Quality Control.

Yonex Quality Control

Nikki and I took two random Yonex racquets just to do a quick test of weight, swing weight, and balance. Although we both expected a solid result, we were shocked that the racquets were so close in specifications. You can watch the video of the test here. This is obviously not a scientific study but a quick test to verify our experience. I always measure all my review racquets on my HEAD 3-in-1 machine and generally, Yonex have been superior overall.

There were some comments after my YouTube video about Yonex having dropped the ball a bit on quality control after the pandemic. Some players expressed concerns and experiences where racquets were quite far from expectations in terms of swing weight especially. I hope that is overall not the case, but I will keep measuring and following this space on Tennisnerd.

Why is quality control so important?

When I write or talk about quality control, I don’t refer to the build quality of racquets and materials used in the process. This is about the specifications because if the weight and balance are far off the listed specifications, it means the customer will have a completely different experience. This has been a headache in the tennis world for a while. And sadly, there have been no real improvements to it in recent times.

Fischer tried “Zero Tolerance” in the 2000s, which was a great project and idea, but not financially feasible according to people in the industry. I still rate Pacific (who bought Fischer tennis) very highly for quality control, so they are worth a shoutout.

Smaller, boutique-style brands also offer good quality control in my opinion. The smaller business model allows you to be more precise, which is great. The larger manufacturers can improve though. Would that mean that racquets will get more expensive? I don’t know. They are hardly quite expensive if you look at the recent listings.

What are your experiences in terms of racquet quality control?