Tennis Racquet Review: Wilson BLX Six.One 95 (16x18)

July 18th, 2012

I have played with Wilson frames for much (most) of my time as a tennis player; many more years than I care to count at this stage in my life. And I am predisposed as a result to always give any Wilson product a serious hit just on general principle. For a few years though, with the whole n-Code, 'let’s put out a thousand frames every 18 months,' I was wondering what the real plan was at Wilson.

This season with the production of the Juice Pro series (my new weapon of choice) and the winnowing of the BLX line to a few excellent models, it feels as if the company has finally regained the focus which made them great to begin with.

I do wish still that they would do something about the marketing titles of their racquets and the numbering system. The use of capital letters and dots and numbers is just random and confusing.

Having said that, I really liked the BLX Six. One 95. The frame is the standard 27 inches and weighs 12.2 ounces strung. It comes with what passes for the traditional Wilson red paint based cosmetic setup and has a 16 main X 18 crosses string pattern (also comes in a 18 x 20 string pattern).

I hit with this racquet and liked it, before I switched to the Wilson BLX Juice Pro and teaching with it for a couple of days did nothing to lessen the earlier good impression. The racquet is very solid, has no vibration to speak of and feels very solid when hitting ground strokes and serves. I felt that it was easy to generate pace and spin and to both defend from the baseline, counter punch from the baseline and to attack short ground strokes.

I had a little trouble controlling my volley depth with this racquet and also really nailing approach shots. The feel of the racquet is a little blocky for me, and that was the primary reason that I chose the Juice Pro in the end. That and a little more pop on my serve with the Juice Pro. But I can see a lot of very good players deciding that this racquet suits their game perfectly. Maybe in a totally blind random test baseline players might be slightly more comfortable with this frame than with some other possibilities. But we are talking about feel and nuance and string setups and the use of lead tape in the final stages of comparison here.

This is a very fine frame and a worthy addition to the Wilson line.

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