Wanna “geek out” with us? We believe twist weight, which is becoming a popular paddle metric among some of the paddle review and online paddle sale sites, is perhaps not being portrayed as accurately as possible. It is widely defined as impacting the sweet spot of a paddle. The narrative is the higher the twist weight, the larger the sweet spot. We believe this is technically incorrect.
In tennis, we learned from the research of Brody, Lindsay and Cross, a “sweet spot” is actually a small node and tennis racquets have 3 such nodes. Generally most refer to the middle node, the center of percussion, is widely referred to as the sweet spot, but there is also a vibration node and power point which are also important points. It stands to reason these points/nodes or something similar exist in pickleball, but thus far no specific research with quantifiable data has been published.
So, the likelihood of twist weight impacting the size of the sweet spot of a paddle in ways being described is unlikely. Instead we believe pickleball paddles have an effective hitting area which is more like a zone where the ball response off the face is consistent and predictable. Hits outside of this effective hitting area are generally lower powered and the hitting sensation (feedback the player receives) is less comfortable because more shock is being produced.
The size of the effective hitting area (let’s call it a zone…effective hitting zone or EHZ) varies according to a number of construction factors, but the primary factor is paddle shape. While twist weight is an interesting metric, it is not yet fully understood. We believe it can help predict the effective hitting zone (EHZ) and often a higher twist weight can indicate a larger zone, but not in all instances and it’s usually not a significant change in size. The size of the EHZ will vary according to how tightly the paddle is being gripped. Many players are already holding paddles tighter than necessary which makes twist weight less of a factor in terms of impacting the size of the effective hitting zone a paddle. Thus we believe the EHZ metric is most valuable to players who play with relaxed grip pressure.
That’s enough for today. Now, back to our regular programming message of asking you to let us use our knowledge to help you select your next paddle.
