Find out how to distinguish between a beginner’s tennis racket and an intermediate tennis racket to make the best choice. I am a recreational tennis player who, after years of experience playing the sport and researching the subject, managed to gather the best information regarding the choice of the first racket.

In this post, I have gathered the main information about these two types of rackets, the basic difference between a beginner and a professional tennis racket is as follows:

A beginner’s tennis racket needs to help generate more power in the strokes, while the intermediate tennis racket doesn’t need to help as much in power and needs to give a little more control.

I listed below, in more details, some differences between beginners and intermediates tennis rackets and I also recommended models for you to begin.

I still remember when I started playing Tennis for the first time more than 10 years ago, I was already an adult and I wanted to leave the sedentary life and I chose this wonderful sport, at the time I started with a beginner’s racket, but if I were to start again, I would definitely choose another model.

Before you continue, is important for you to know which grip size your first racket should have, here in this Post I’ve talk about this and other important questions regarding the grip.

Beginners or intermediate tennis racket? Which one to choose

If you are sure that you’re gonna evolve relatively fast playing tennis, you can begin with a racket that can be used by beginners and intermediate players, this is great because you won’t need to buy a new racket anytime soon.

Beginner’s tennis rackets are more suitable for young players or beginners who are going to spend less time learning tennis and so they are far from being on the intermediate level.

However, if you are an adult who is beginning to learn with a teacher and practicing every week, you can go with an intermediate racket, which also can be called tweener racket.

The best intermediate tennis racket is the Babolat Pure Drive, is easy to play and can be used by beginners too, this racket has these 3 key specifications:

Head size: 100
Strung Weight: 11.2oz (318g)
Balance: 4 pts HL

In the Babolat family of rackets you can find options for beginners like the Boost Drive and Boost Aero, if you want to know more about the differences between the Pure Drive with those two models, click here to read my other Post.

Lots of Pro Tennis players have chosen a Babolat racket, to know which ones, click here to other Post in this blog.

If you want another brand, you can start with rackets with the same or close specification. Is also good to read reviews to know if the racket is going to be good for beginners, just looking into the specifications not always can be enough.

I am gonna list below the best’s rackets for beginners and intermediate tennis players:

Babolat Pure Drive
Wilson Clash 100
Head Radical MP
Dunlop FX500
Yonex Ezone 100
Tecnifibre T-Fight 300

Another famous tennis racket that is a great choice to players on beginner and intermediate level is the Babolat Pure Aero.

Wilson Clash 100 is a great choice for beginners, this racket have a unique technology that can help the beginner player to evolve better and faster the strokes. This would be my personal choice if I were beginning.

The Wilson brand have other good model for beginner players, you can find out which one I’ve chosen for the best beginner’s choice, click here and go to the other Post with the list.

Maybe you are like me and want to choose a racket with one of the best quality control, the rackets from Yonex, in the beginning I didn’t mind the brand because back in the day I didn’t have favorite players like now and my first racket was an Yonex.

To help you choose better what Yonex racket is more suitable to you, I’ve made this Post here with a list with the best for beginners.

Right now I have some Pro Tennis players that I like to watch playing and I have purchase a racket just because one of then play with the same model, if you are looking to know which racket your favorite player uses, click here to see the list for men’s players and click here to the list for woman players.

Beginner Tennis racket ideal specifications

A stick to be considerate a beginner tennis racket, has some specifications in common, I will list them so that you can better identify when searching for a model on a store:

Larger head size: Beginner tennis rackets have a larger head size than intermediate tennis rackets, this is to increase the sweetspot and facilitate a better hitting of the ball.

Head size example: 100, 105 and 110.

Lighter weight: A beginner’s tennis racket has a lower weight because the head size is bigger, if such a racket is too heavy; it is difficult for the tennis player to handle.

Example: tennis rackets with 8oz (226g) to 10oz (283g).

Most Pro Tennis players uses heavy rackets, you can find out why this happens in this article I’ve made here in the blog.

Head heavy: The weight of a beginner tennis racket is much more towards the head than on an intermediate tennis racket, this is necessary for the racket to generate more power with less effort.

Example: 1 pts HH, 3 pts HH and 5 pts HH.

You will find on the racket specifications: X pts HH, X is a number and the bigger he is the more weight the racket have on the head comparing with the weight on the handle, this could mean more power.

If the racket is head light, you will find on the specifications: X pts HL.

Although some stores indicates those rackets are for beginners, is more appropriate to say that these are improvement rackets and I recommend that you choose a racket like this if you are going to play every now and then on weekends and are not interested in learning the techniques properly.

Seniors players can beneficiate from those kind of rackets too, since they, in most of times, need more power on the strokes.

Intermediate Tennis racket ideal specifications

An intermediate racket usually has the following specifications:

Intermediate head size: An intermediate tennis racket doesn’t need to be too big like a beginner racket, but not too small like some of the advanced level rackets.

Example: 100, 99 and 98.

You can use intermediate Tennis racket even in high level, I’ve made here in this article an research about the size Pros normally use, go there to find out which one is more preeminent on ATP and WTA.

Can’t be too light: An intermediate tennis racket needs to be heavier than a beginner’s tennis racket so that it can withstand the impact of heavier balls coming from intermediate-level opponents. However, intermediate level rackets cannot be extremely heavy because they would lose too much power.

Example: 10oz (283g) to 11.3oz (320g).

Some pro Tennis players use rackets in range of 320g, I’ve listed the average weight of their rackets here in this post.

Head Light: The weight of an intermediate tennis racket has to be concentrated more on the handle than on the head, giving more control in the strokes.

Example: 4 pts HL, 5 pts HL and 7 pts HL.

As it is for the head heavy tennis racket, the bigger the number of points, the more weight is concentrated on the handle.