Tennis

Pre-strung beginners’ racquets and unstrung graphite frames:

the two look alike on a wall and are bought for different reasons. A pre-strung racquet comes ready to play, with a light, wide head and factory strings that are fine for a first season of lessons. A performance frame from Babolat, Wilson, Head or Yonex is usually sold unstrung, because the player chooses the string and the tension, and that choice changes the racquet as much as the frame does. Heavy topspin hitters favour polyester, which grips the ball but goes dead within weeks of play even if it never breaks; a multifilament or synthetic gut is kinder to the elbow and suits most club players better. Junior racquets go by length, and a child who still grips the handle halfway up is ready for the next size. A padel racket has no strings at all; those and pickleball paddles are under padel and pickleball. Agility ladders, cones and resistance bands for footwork sit with exercise equipment.

High-altitude balls and hard-court shoes:

the capital is above the height at which the ITF approves high-altitude balls, and a standard pressurised ball there plays fast and wild. Look for the words high altitude on the tube, or use pressureless balls, which also suit ball machines and coaching baskets. Pressurised balls start losing their bounce the moment the tube is opened, so pre-owned ones need to arrive in a tube with its seal unbroken. On cement, pick extra-duty felt, which outlasts regular felt on an abrasive surface. Everyday trainers are not court shoes: a real court shoe has a flat herringbone sole, a stiff side wall and a reinforced toe for dragging on serves. Running shoes roll over on the first wide ball.

Babolat, Wilson and Head frames, current and a generation old:

a current performance frame runs from about Q1,800 to Q2,300 new without strings, while a pre-strung beginners’ racquet costs a few hundred quetzales and resells for very little. The brands repaint and rename each line every couple of years with small changes underneath, so a sound frame one or two generations back plays almost the same as the new one and goes for a fraction of it. That makes a used performance frame the best buy in tennis, as long as you budget for fresh strings, because the ones in it are almost always past their best.

Bumper guards ground down on cement and copied Pure Drives:

low volleys and scraped half-volleys on hard courts grind through the plastic bumper at the top of the head. Once the graphite underneath shows, the frame chips there. Sight along the head for a hairline crack, listen for a rattle, and check whether the strings have sawn notches into each other, a sign of heavy use. Peel back the overgrip too: it can hide a grip worn to the bevels or a size too small, and the real size is printed on the butt cap. The most popular models, the Babolat Pure Drive and Pure Aero and the Wilson Pro Staff, are the ones copied. A fake is often well under the stated weight, with blurry decals, no logo moulded into the butt cap and no serial number. On a ball machine, the battery is what fails: ask to see it run a full hopper.

The model, the string date and a hit on a public court:

name the model and generation printed on the frame, then head size, weight and grip size, and say what strings are in it and when it was strung. Photograph the bumper, the throat, the butt cap and the string bed close up. Sell balls only in sealed tubes, and give court shoes in US and centimetre sizes with the surface they were worn on. A player driving in from Jalapa will want to hit before paying, so offer to meet at a court and bring a fresh tube, because dead strings make a good frame feel like a bad one.