You gotta love the off-season, as short as it is! I thought that I would write a quick message today talking about some of the “hot” rumors floating around cyberspace regarding racquets.

Djokovic to Head…
 This one came up last year around this time as well. Rumor has it that Nole will be returning to his roots, by switching back to Head racquets. This season he used the Wilson

[K] Blade Tour, but many skeptics will tell you that his frame is just painted to look like it. They will tell you that his Wilson racquet is based on an older Head frame he used a few years back, the Liquidmetal Radical MP. This year’s version of the rumor has Djokovic switching to the Microgel Prestige Pro. The specs of the new frame make sense, but not the stringing pattern. The Prestige Pro is a 16×19, Novak has been using an 18×20. This leads some to think that there will be a new Head frame on the market soon. This makes the most sense to me. IF Djokovic is making a move to Head you can bet that he got a signature frame deal, maybe not right away, but it will be coming soon. We’ll just have to wait a couple of weeks to find out.

A new Pure Drive for Andy?
Pictures (see below) have shown up online of Andy with a new updated Pure Drive. The new racquet has a lighter blue paintjob, and some new accents at the yoke of the frame. Is this the new Roddick Pure Drive? Will it have the hotly debated Cortex technology, or something new? This rumor seems logical to me. Up to this point Babolat has not introduced any new frames for 2009, and they have not had anything new since summer. They did just introduce the Cortex Pure Drive two years ago, that would be a quick technology turnaround, especially for Babolat who didn’t change the original Pure Drive for six years! What I think i more likely is that they have updated the cosmetics on the Roddick signature Pure Drive to make it stand out more from the standard Pure Drive. I might be wrong, but it seems that if they were going to make a change to their flagship frame in 2009, we would have heard about it by now.

Pete’s new stick
One thing that we do know for sure is that Wilson is introducing a new Pete Sampras signature frame in January. This rumor started heating up back in the spring when Pete was sporting a blacked out frame in his Madison Square Garden exhibition with Roger Federer. Word had it that Wilson had made a new prototype frame to bring back the classic feel of the old Pro Staff 6.0. Enter the [k] Pro Staff… This bad boy is 88 square inches, and almost 13 ounces of classic goodness. Wilson dropped a lot of coin to resign Sampras so they could cash in on what they think will be the year Fed passes Pete on the all time grand slam list. Look for a lot of commercial media if Roger wins the Aussie and ties the record. In the meantime, demo this racquet. If you have the game…