Lotto Raptor Clay – Shoes Review

I have been playing with my Lotto Raptor Clay shoes for exactly six months now, throughout a rather intense summer of tennis, during which I could play on average about four/five times a week, including training, tournaments and team competition. And this is my honest review of my experience with the Lotto Raptor.

Spoiler alert: I am very happy with them, but the search for the shoe grail continues…

Lotto Raptor Review

First of all, let’s start with full disclosure: I did not want to try the Lotto Raptor. I bought a pair of Mirage 100, Lotto’s most common among the tennis shoes seen on tour worn by pros. I bought them online (as unfortunately is happening to me more and more often even for shoes) and when they arrived I simply could not slip into the shoes. I couldn’t get in! The Lotto Mirage 100 were so narrow on the forefoot and tight on the neck of my foot that it was impossible for me to keep them on! I had no choice but to return them.

Looking for alternatives, my attention was caught by a 60% reduction on the Raptor model instead. I was a bit sceptical as the only pro I knew using them was, at the time, Stefano Travaglia, 32 years old Italian with a career high of 60 in the world in 2021. And a friend of mine from Italy who’s never won a match in his whole life (but he is in love with the Lotto Raptor!). But the deal was really good and you know what the poet says, ‘I can resist everything but temptations’, so in the end I exchanged them for the Mirage 100 (even saving a few Euros).

And when the Lotto Raptor finally arrived, boy oh boy, what a surprise! As soon as I slipped in the shoes, this Lotto Raport felt incredibly comfortable. I could immediately feel the great cushioning of the sole, on the whole length of the foot. The tongue was very soft and gentle on the neck of the foot and the whole shoe gave me a sense of enveloping my foot very well without making me feel tight (a feeling for instance I had with the Asics Speed 2).

I was also very pleased with the rubber band running around the tip of the shoes, promising good durability against my heavy toe-dragging habit. A habit that literally opened up the Asics Speed in a couple of months.

The Lotto Raptors on court

All in all, a great first impression! I was very much looking forward to testing them on court. Not to mention that Lotto always provides their customer with an additional (thicker) pair of in-soles by Ortholite and an additional pair of shoe-laces in contrasting colour. Well done you Lotto, thank you, that’s a very nice and unexpected treat! If only the shoes were a little more pleasing to the eye…but again, I suppose that’s a matter of taste, or, as the poet says, ‘De gustibus non est disputandum’.

The playtest of the Lotto Raptor allowed me to discover a couple of things that went unnoticed during the first unboxing and fitting test. 

Firstly, the rim around the ankle is slightly higher than my old Speed and Gel Res. Not as far as an Adidas Ubersonic (which I did not like exactly for that reason), but far enough to make you feel protected enough to boost your confidence and go for that side sliding without fearing a nasty injury. For me, a fundamental feat for anybody who plays mostly on clay.

Secondly, while the shoes look sturdy and a bit bulky, the net in the forefoot area makes them very flexible and able to accommodate and even facilitate the sharp and sudden foot movements so common when playing on clay. A great surprise for a pair of shoes whose main selling point is comfort and durability, rather than flexibility and speed. The Lotto Raptor turned out to be a great combination of support and flexibility, albeit they aren’t the lightest and therefore fastest of shoes.

Soles for hiking shoes?

Lastly, the traction. The Lotto Raptor’s outer sole is made by Vibram, an Italian brand famous for making soles for hiking shoes. And so I was fearing a little for that kind of stiff, heavy grip you get with hiking shoes, but I was so wrong. The Raptor sole grips very, very well on any kind of clay courts I have played on last summer. Mind you, I am talking about European red clay and I have never played on American green clay. But also here in Europe you can find different kinds of clay: courts with all-year clay (terrible in my opinion and a waste of money, but happy to have an open conversation on it), courts with a lot of clay and soggy, therefore very slow, courts with very little clay and dry, therefore very fast, etc.

With the Raptors I have never had a problem, never had a match during which I was slipping a lot or getting stuck. Rather the opposite of my old Speed, which performed very well when the clay was damp and compact, but gave me the feeling of ice-skating when playing on courts with little or very dry clay.

I would like to tell you something about the breathability of the shoe, for me another very important factor when assessing a pair of shoes, but unfortunately last summer was so terrible that I hardly ever had a really, terribly hot summer day during which I played tennis. Sorry!

Bonus track. Nevertheless, I played on grass (with nobody less than The Tennis Mentor Ashley Neaves!), on a very typical British summer day: drizzle, humidity and a light touch of wind and the Raptors did very well to keep me afloat. I slipped only a couple of times and with the complicity of the chalk. So, once more, well done Lotto!

Conclusion

To conclude, you might be asking why I wrote that my search for the shoe grail continues despite my enthusiastic review of the Lotto Raptor. Good question! 

Well, the big downside for me has been durability. After five months of playing, the net in the forefoot opened up on the outer side of the shoe. Clay and its little stones started to creep into the shoes and under my feet, which I feel very uncomfortable and annoying. The big toe dragging area was safe (differently from the Speed) but they nonetheless broke on the side at the end of the rubber drag-gard running around the tip of the shoe. And a couple of weeks later, also the inside of the shoe broke, mirroring exactly the same point where it broke on the outside. For a pair of 160€ worth shoes, I would expect them lasting a little more than six months, especially for an average club player like myself. 

Am I being too demanding? This is genuinely an open question to you all Tennisnerds out there, because I was very sorry to see my beloved Lotto Raptor cracking open. 

Durability aside, in terms of comfort and performance, I prefer them to my old Gel Resolution 8 and to my old Asics Speed 2. And I was ready to buy them again for the winter season, when I saw a great deal for a pair of Diadora Blueshield Torneo 2… stay tuned!