Tennis Racquet Review: Head Graphene Radical MP 

The Head Graphene Radical MP tennis racquet is one of the later offerings by this august racquet company as they continue to revamp and represent their line, with World Number 1 Novak Djokovic as their lead pro player. This tennis racquet reflects both the engineering and design dollars spent on Head tennis racquet line, as well as the effort being put forth with regard to racquet cosmetics, marketing and public relations. This frame for sure looks like the outcome of a serious multi layered corporate effort.

To begin with the frame looks New Age. Orange is not my personal favorite color, but there is a reason that road workers all over the world wear orange shirts and jackets and safety vests. More so than the traditional red used on fire trucks, orange catches the attention of even the casual observer. The new Head tennis racquet looks great but also classic with the flashy orange paint job, dimpled contrast areas and the traditional ‘H’ Head lettering.

The frame is the standard 27 inches long and weighs 10.4 ounces (strung?) and plays like a much heavier frame. The fact that it is slightly head light according to the minute lettering on the tennis racquet and has a 16 X 19 string pattern, means that it is easy to access both spin and power.

This is a great frame for producing high quality groundstrokes from the back of the court. It was easy, almost effortless to rally with this racquet and to create good to excellent angles from the back of the court. This was also a comfortable tennis racquet to transition from defense to offense, or neutral to offense within the confines of rally play.

However, the racquet felt somehow lighter, almost too light when it came to trying to drive passing shots and\or approach shots. I just didn’t have the same sense of where the tennis racquet head was when I tried to truly rip balls.

A gradual buildup of racquet head speed during a rally seemed fine. But it was a little of an issue when you just tried to hammer a pass or an approach from more of a one big shot in a point platform. And for sure producing big returns were a little bit of a problem with this frame.

The same was true on the serve and overheads. When you really tried to accelerate through the ball and maybe hit it a little flatter, there was a slight but very noticeable loss of control; truly maybe more of a loss of confidence. Volleys were solid with this frame, although it was hard to flip stretch volleys where you were pulled out wide.

I think that this is an excellent racquet for players in the 3.5 to 4.5 plus range; and it may be the perfect transitional tennis racquet for junior players as they move to adult frames. I think that stronger players may have to think about lead tape and careful string selection to be able to get the full benefit of this frame. But this frame seems to be a nice option worth serious consideration for a good number of players.