I am watching the opening matches of the Australian Open! This should be a great tournament with many possibilities on the womens side.

Speaking of women, Maria Sharapova is playing right now and she is using a Head racquet with proper ID and logo. Most everyone knew she was using a Head racquet last year but it was just recently made official. This leads me to my question/comment about players changing racquets. I am paraphrasing here but Brad Gilbert thinks the change from Babolat to Yonex by Caroline Wosniacki is a bad move because the Babolat is designed for spin and the Yonex is for flat strokes.

I don’t know about you but I have seen some pretty significant spin off of Yonex racquets, as well as Babolat racquets. I know string pattern and spacing can contribute to spin but the racquet, any racquet, needs to be swinging from low to high to impart topspin on the ball.

I sort of agree with Brad that changing racquets right before a major is risky business but with all the great racquet technicians available the racquets should be swinging “just right” for Caroline. One thing about this change is that you can’t hide the differences between the two racquets with cosmetics!

Anyway, good luck to all players and especially those that just changed racquets!