Prince EXO3 Tour 100 Lite Tennis Racquet Review 

I really don’t understand the racquet companies sometimes. So basically they make a ‘lite’ version of a racquet, and instead of just making the same frame and making it lighter, they change the name of strings located in the crosses by one. Is this marketing strategy? A way to help stringers? A shot at making life easier for people in the sports superstores who usually are not that informed about what is in their section? I don’t get it. But it is more than a little confusing on the face of things.

This racquet is much different than the other frames it is associated with in the Prince marketing materials. It is the standard length and weighs 9.0 ounces unstrung (9. 7/8 strung with dampener on my own scale). It has a 100 square inch head, but it is 1” inch thick, compared to the standard  ¾” inch width of Prince “player frames\racquets”. This is a not insignificant difference. This racquet just feels different on contact than the other Prince frames that I have hit with and reviewed lately.

The truth is that the Prince EXO3 Tour 100 Lite just doesn’t feel like a ‘tour’ or high performance racquet to me. It is too light by some amount, and as soon as I started hitting with it I was launching balls to unexplored areas of the club parking lot. Prince may say that the power rating is 875, which is low by their definition, but I thought the racquet simply was overpowered. It wasn’t quite to the trampoline stage, but is was simply too loose and blocky with regard to feel, to consistently produce enough spin to harness the power.

A player review I read somewhere online said that this racquet is a good platform, since it requires serious retro-fitting with lead tape. Maybe that is a good point. But if you have to add a lot of lead tape under the grip and on the head, to make the frame useful for baseline play, why bother. Wouldn’t you just want to buy a heavier frame that is balanced in a way that is suitable for your game. It is one thing to use lead tape to adjust and\or fine-tune a racquet to meet the specific needs of your game, it is another thing to have to use lead tape to make the racquet suitable for use.

I didn’t like the feel of this racquet for groundstrokes, serves or volleys. It was just overpowered to the nth degree. I do think that 3.0/3.5 players who are looking for added pop might like this frame, also junior players who are starting to use adult frames. A small sized junior player who has semi-western or western grips on the forehand side and a good spring serve, might find this racquet perfect for playing against larger kids where they need to produce some cheap and easy pace. I do think that there is a market for this racquet, it just isn’t among players who typically use a racquet with the phrase ‘tour’ painted on the frame.