Whenever you think that you're stuck playing with a racket that is hurting your game just remember that you could be trying to hit a topspin drive with this war club. It weighs 13.0 oz. making it one of the lighter ones among the six shown.
Imagine an all steel welded frame that is strong enough to use as a pry bar or shovel. Seriously off center hits would send shockwaves up your arm or cause the frame to spin in your hand. Yet when serving a flat serve this racket along with a whole generation of aluminum and steel frames gave you what we used to call a cannonball serve.
As a self defense tool this has no equal for the combination of concealment by function and being seriously dangerous. I used to keep one in the car in the place of a nightstick. In a snowstorm if you had one of these handy and not a shovel you could use it for one especially if you had a cover on it.
The grip sizes on these frames always seemed too large. One major benefit of tubular frames is no wind resistance that translates into more racket head speed. Add this to the tennis museum for evolution of tennis rackets.
From Left to right; Rawlings Steel - 13.4 oz, Tensor Aluminum 13.2 oz, Tensor Pro Steel 13.8 oz, High Skore Aluminum 13.O oz, and the Chemold Aluminum 13.7 oz.
As you can see these things all have much more weight to them than most rackets made today. Even the heaviest rackets of today top out at 12 ounces or less. The one thing in favor of all of these frames was the improved wind resistance most had over wood frames of the time. As you can also notice the racket head size was close to 85 square inches.
Current Market Price at Flea Markets $1-$2
Current Possible Uses: Defensive Club, Snow Shovel, Snow Shoes, Spaghetti Strainer/ Colander, Bee Swatter, Wall Display, Welding Art Material.
