Comparing Tennis Rackets using ChatGPT and Claude

One of the pleasures of any hobby is the gear, and tennis is no exception, with a huge number of racket and string combinations.

The consensus best way to pick your racket is to get access to a complete library of racket and strings and find plenty of time to play with all combinations until you find the one that feels the best.

But most people have to settle for the next best thing - demoing a few rackets to demo from a local shop or short term rental program before purchasing a permanent racket.

Of course, you are still left with the core question - which rackets should I demo for my level and play style? You’d hope Google could help, but searching for (as an example) Babolat Pure Drive vs. Babolat Pure Aero has this page as one of the top results.

The conclusion of that article:

“So, if you are a player who relies on power and control, the Pure Drive may be the better choice for you. But if you are a player who relies on spin and wants a racquet that helps you generate more spin, the Pure Aero may be the better choice. Check out the full line of Babolat racquets here!”

Oof. This is not much help. Pretty much everyone relies on some combo of power, control and spin. It only gets worse if you are comparing across manufacturers.

You can of course go deeper, and look directly at the manufacturer racket specifications, but comparing them means you need to transcribe the specifications by hand into a spreadsheet, or maybe use a comparison tool like Raquet Finder:

Raquet Finder is better than trying to do everything by hand, but it’s still a lot of manual interpretation and analysis, and you are limited to the models that Raquet Finder supports.

What about AI?

The examples below use Claude.ai, which at the time of this writing is one of the best AI models¹, but ChatGPT will also produce something pretty similar:

I started by asking Claude the following prompt:

You are a tennis racket expert. Compare a Yonex Ezone 100, Wilson Ultra 100 v2, Babolat Pure Drive, and Babolat Pure Aero on their key stats in table form. then interpret the differences for me based on my playstyle as a 4.0 rated recreational player.

You can do this for any tennis rackets you want, just by replacing the racket names in the prompt.

Claude’s response is compelling, and superior to anything I found while searching.

First, all the stats for each racket - already retrieved, compiled, and collated into a nifty table:

But then critically, Claude also does some actual analysis and synthesis of the differences between the rackets, customized for the type of player I specifed (a 4.0 recreational player). For example, when analyzing stiffness and swing weight, the two areas where our comparison rackets differ the most, Claude says:

Stiffness: The Babolat Pure Drive has the highest stiffness, which contributes to its power but may be less comfortable for longer playing sessions. The Yonex Ezone 100 has the lowest stiffness, offering more comfort and potentially reducing the risk of arm fatigue or injury.

Swing Weight: The Babolat Pure Aero and Pure Drive have the highest swing weights, which can provide more stability and plow-through on your shots. However, they might feel slightly less maneuverable than the Wilson Ultra 100 v2, which has the lowest swing weight and could be easier to whip around for fast exchanges at the net.

Solid analysis.

But is it correct?

It’s mostly correct, but can have errors. Claude uses the stiffness value from a different model of the Ezone racket (the Ezone 98), so the analysis is not on point.

If you ask Claude to correct the stiffness value, and update the advice,

it produces a new revision of the table and a revised analysis. The revised stiffness analysis from Claude:

Now, let me revise my advice based on the correct stiffness of 67 for the Yonex Ezone 100:

Stiffness: With the corrected information, we can see that the Yonex Ezone 100 and Babolat Pure Aero have the same stiffness rating of 67, which is moderate. The Wilson Ultra 100 v2 is slightly stiffer at 69, and the Babolat Pure Drive remains the stiffest at 71. This changes our perspective on comfort and power distribution.

Despite these minor flaws, this is still my preferred method of comparing rackets - it’s fast, easy to do from anywhere, including a phone, and does 90%+ of the work for me in a few seconds.