Stiffness — the RA figure — is the number buyers ask about most and understand least. It describes how much the frame deforms under load: a stiffer frame returns more of the ball's energy and passes more of the shock back to the arm, a softer one does the opposite. It is not a quality score, and no RA figure is right for everybody.
In the catalogue as it stood on 3 September 2026, 87 of 249 published racquets carried a stiffness figure. They run from RA 55 to RA 72, with the average at 65.0 — so a frame described as "stiff" in a shop is usually about seven points above the middle of the market, not in a category of its own.
The softest frames we hold a figure for are the Prince Phantom 100X (305 g) at RA 55, the Wilson Clash 100 Pro v3 at 56, and the Wilson Clash 100 v3 and Head Gravity MP 2025 at 57. The stiffest is the Babolat Pure Drive 2025 at RA 72, with the Solinco Blackout 100 (300 g) and the Babolat Pure Aero Team 2023 at 71.
The other 162 racquets have no figure in our records. That is not a gap we paper over: a missing stiffness value means the frame has not been measured on our bench and the manufacturer has not published a number we were willing to repeat. Those rows show the field empty rather than filled with an estimate.
One practical note. RA is measured on an unstrung frame. A string bed adds several points of effective stiffness, and a full polyester bed adds more than a multifilament — which is why a soft frame strung tight can feel harsher on the arm than a stiffer frame strung low.
Written from our own catalogue records. Every figure above is the figure stored on the product page named beside it.
