Racket Weight: Factory Stock or Heavier?

It's well known that many top professionals play with racquets that look like the one you can buy from your favorite pro shop, but are actually custom made or modified to be different than the one available to the public.

One way that us average Joes can make our racquet feel and play more like our professional hero's is by adding weight to affect the overall mass and balance of a racquet. But why would we do  this?

There are several reasons to change the weight and balance of a tennis racquet. For one, a heavier racquet can be more stable when returning high-velocity shots. Another reason for changing the weight and balance of a racquet is to help overcome or avoid injury to wrist, elbow or shoulder. A racquet that is handle heavy (head light) may tend to be more joint friendly, thus reducing the likelihood of injury or re-injury.

A third objective of changing the weight or balance of a racquet is often used by physically-strong players. These players may be strong enough to handle and enjoy racquets that have a higher swing weight. These are the players who will prefer those racquets that come from the factory with a head-heavy feeling.

I, personally, for the past several years added weight to my racquets, which made them 345 grams (unstrung) and nine points head light (also unstrung). This weight and balance was the same as Federer's published racquet specs. I did this not to simply emulate the arguable greatest of all time, but rather to reduce the shock and stress on my chronic elbow tendonosis (no, not tendonitis) and long time shoulder rotator-cuff issues (now resolved).

Recently I removed all added weight from my racquets. The purpose of this change was to add racquet speed for more energy in my shots (in the form of ball revolution and translational speed). This is according to the physics equation, E = 1/2 mV*V (energy equals one-half mass times velocity squared). This equation tells us that velocity (that is, racquet speed) is significantly more important than racquet mass in the energy of the collision between racquet and ball. Another purpose of the change was to be able to move my racquet more quickly to better respond to the quick at-net exchanges in doubles.

Although my shots -- especially my serves -- have since become more energetic in both pace and ball rotation, and my racquet may be a bit quicker to move, there has also been more elbow irritation and some new shoulder soreness. For now, though, I'm sticking to the lighter configuration.

What do you think?