The Rebel Team is a “control-based” racquet but made to be lighter at about 10.8oz with strings, 10.2oz unstrung. The reason why is to help players who don’t want to swing around with 12.2oz racquet, which is the regular Rebel. Compared to its brother the Rebel, the Rebel team is a lighter version with a more HH balance, at 2pts HL vs. the Rebel which is 14pts HL. This racquet is still made with Energy channels, the EXO3 technology, which allows a lot more string movement giving a great deal of comfort and at the same time increasing the sweet spot of the racquet. Enough about the technologies lets see how this racquet plays.

 

 

Ground strokes: On my ground strokes, the weight of the Rebel Team was manageable. It was a little too light for my preference weighing at about 10.8oz, but there was plenty of room to whip the racquet around to give me a nice follow-through on the ball. Having an 18x20 string pattern on a 95in head size racquet allowed me to swing the racquet around with ease and not worry about hitting the ball long. Even though it’s a tight string pattern I did find the spin on the ball with ease. When miss hitting the ball, I didn’t feel a lot of the vibration going straight up my arm that I have felt with some other racquets. What I found that wasn’t helpful with this racquet was the weight. It was too light, I felt like there was some power missing because of the disproportion of the racquet. Small head size with a tight string pattern and a lightweight just don’t go well together. Overall the racquet again was very comfortable to hit around with forehands and backhands giving me great comfort and control.

 

Volleys: Volleys on this racquet was amazing. I got a really crisp feel to the ball and really great precision. The weight helped the maneuverability of the racquet. The balance of the racquet was headlight enough so that it was a lot easier to pick up and move around chasing after hard shots that were slightly way from me. Even though it was only HL by 2pts, I was still able to move this racquet around with ease. My only complaint about this racquet on volleys is when I was hitting on hard shots the racquet does feel a little unstable. However, with that instability did come the comfort from the string movements, and a larger sweet spot than most 95in racquets

 

Serve: When serving with this racquet I found that there was much room for improvement. I know the racquet was a control-based racquet but with the lighter weight I figured that I could get more power out of my serve. In order for me to get power out of this lightweight I had to flatten out my serves and just strike straight through the ball. On my flat serves I could get the ball flying straight out from the racquet but I couldn’t get too much control. Kick serves were nice. The Rebel Team’s lightweight gave a bigger advantage to graze the ball and sending it spinning like crazy to the other side of the net. I also got optimum control on this racquet because of the bigger sweet spot. It pocketed the ball more and really allowed the every string to catch the ball. But once again like I stated above the power of the racquet wasn’t really there for me.

 

Overall this racquet is great and was very comfortable because of the energy channels that allowed the strings to move. I felt like with the lighter weight there was a loss of power and stability. Even though there were losses, the gain of this racquet was that I could maneuver it with ease. I had no problem pulling this racquet back and giving it a big follow through. I didn’t have to prepare myself as early as anticipated. I would recommend this racquet to someone who has plenty of power but doesn’t want to swing around a heavy racquet, also any 3.5 player or higher.