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Emma Raducanu’s Racquet Setup

Emma Raducanu took the tennis world by storm in 2021 when she made her miraculous run to the US Open championship at the age of 18. Though she has not experienced fantastic results since, she is still a threat in any draw.

As expected, fanfare exploded around everything related to Emma’s tennis game, Including her racket.

While other more prominent players endorsed Wilson’s eighth version of their Blade series rackets, Emma played the US Open with her well-worn v7 paint job and completed her dream run to the title without dropping a set.

Though she has struggled with injuries and her form since her major title win, the Brit is only twenty years old and has plenty of time to regain the form that won a grand slam again. 

  • Endorsed Racquet: Wilson Blade 98 16×19 v8
  • Actual Racquet: Wilson BLX Steam 100 Pro Stock
  • Strings: Luxilon ALU Power Rough 125 mains and Natural Gut Crosses

What’s Under the Paint?

As with most professional players endorsing Wilson Blade line of rackets, Emma does not actually use a frame in the blade line or an old version of the blade she endorses.

What she uses is the Wilson steam blx100 racket. This Frame was  meant to rival the Pure Drive and other tweener style rackets popular when it released. It has a 100 square inch head size and a 16 by 20 string pattern. It also packs an extra quarter inch of length.

This racquet supplies ample access to power and spin while still providing a bit of feel and control through a lower flex and slightly thinner beam than many others in its category.

We can tell that Emma uses this rocket due to the 4 white grommets in the throat of the frame. Along with this, it has been confirmed by multiple professional stringers that she is using the Steam 100. 

Specs

Emma adds a bit of weight to her racket, like most professional players do. Emma’s unstrung specs are printed on a sticker in the throat of her racket. With this, we can estimate her specs with relative ease. 

Her unstrung specs are: 

  • Unstrung mass: 305g
  • Unstrung balance: 31.5cm
  • Unstrung swingweight: 286

Which converts to:

  • Strung mass: 323g
  • Strung balance: 32.5 cm
  • Strung swingweight: 316

This is probably before an overgrip. Emma has been spotted with a little bit of lead on her frames around the 3 and 9 o’clock positions which may be just for matching specs or could furnish a small swingweight bump. It’s not clear if she has this modification on all of her frames or not. 

Strings

Emma was employing a hybrid of two polyester strings when she won the US Open, both from Luxilon: Luxilon ALU Power Rough mains and Luxilon Element crosses. Gael Monfils also used this hybrid but with the smooth version of ALU Power in the mains.

The element softens the stringbed and allows for a significant increase in snapback, spin, and feel as opposed to keeping ALU Power in the crosses, at the expense of a little control. Emma has since switched to natural gut in the crosses which further increases feel, power and comfort over Element.

It may be a personal preference of hers at this point, or she could be looking for some extra comfort after her wrist injury that caused her issues throughout 2022.

She strings her poly and gut hybrid at 52 pounds, or at least she did at the 2022 French Open, as shared by one of the stringers from the Wilson team. 

What’s Next For Her?

It’s easy to see Emma has made quite a few changes since her grand slam title win: coaching, scheduling, and stringing to name a few.

She’s obviously capable of playing some amazing tennis, and it seems she’s intent on trying whatever it takes to get back to the upper echelon of the game.

Though her ranking has dropped to 75th in the world at the end of 2022, she will still be a dangerous floater in any draw.

Let’s hope she can regroup in 2023 and regain some of the form from a couple of years ago!

If you’re interested in other WTA players’ racquets, I listed all the top 50 players’ racquets in this post.