Shapovalov’s blacked-out racquet

I have been watching some ATP action from Basel and Vienna this week. Yesterday I watched Shapovalov’s blacked-out racquet beat Evans.

It’s, obviously, Shapovalv playing, not Shapovalov’s blacked-out racquet. But sometimes racquet nerds, like myself, pay way too much attention to the racquet. It’s a fun hobby to discuss racquets and strings, but tennis is all about skill, grit, and footwork.

What is Shapovalov’s blacked-out racquet? It’s supposed to be the new Yonex VCORE 95 that will hit the shelves later this year or early Jan 2023. The young Canadian had a period where he went from his SV 95 to the new Ezone 98, then to the current VCORE 95 (allegedly), and then to the blacked-out racquet that he beat Evans with yesterday.

In the match against Evans, Shapo took an early foothold of the match and never let go. It was an impressive performance and a comfortable 6-3 6-3 win. It was noticeable that Evans tried to come over the ball more on his backhand side instead of slicing 85% of the time, which is his usual medicine, but it didn’t help in this match.

Listen to the podcast

Are you trying to follow the ATP and WTA tour but find it challenging to keep up? Get a summary of each week’s action in the Tennisnerd podcast that I do together with Dennis Timar. The last episode is called “Make multifilaments great again” and refers to Timar’s mission of helping players use the correct string and avoid tennis elbow. So we go from ATP news and gossip to gear and more. If you have any questions or ideas that we should talk about on the podcast, please comment below!

And don’t miss the blockbuster match between in-form Felix Auger-Aliassime and current world number one, Carlos Alcaraz in Basel! It will hopefully not disappoint!