The average human attention span is 8.25 seconds. And I hate to say I was disappointed with the Spartus Ballista before I stepped onto the court.
Let’s start with that TLDR:
The Spartus Ballista seemed to have an interesting new technology with build of the face and core; however, is a completely baffling design.
As soon as I pulled the Ballista out of its packaging, I grabbed the handle and sighed. I’m not a fan of thick handles. This is incredibly thick and square. If that sounds good to you, then stop reading and test it out for yourself. I know some tennis players that loved the feel of the handle, but didn’t spend enough time to see if they liked how it played.
Even though I disliked the handle, I needed to give it a shot on the court. Everything about the face and core construction sounded great. It’s inherently a soft paddle with control. That’s something my game should benefit from immensely.
With the throw of the first ball from my Slinger bag machine, my first hit was dead center of the sweet spot. A nice drive, a little soft, but what confused me was the lack of feedback from the ball. I didn’t feel the hit. Now the question is, is that because of the thick handle absorbing the shock or is it the face and core material? Why not both? After a few more rounds of drives and dinks, I decided it was time to customize with tape on the throat and top corners. Time to repeat the same drills.
The added weight made the drives a bit harder, but still significantly soft compared to my other paddles. But the net game. The net game with the Spartus Ballista is fairly similar to the Selkirk Labs 003 paddles, which are over double the cost of the Spartus Ballista.
For me, I wasn’t interested in continuing to familiarize myself with the Ballista to use as my main paddle. The handle is a huge negative for me and affects every shot negatively aside from dinks.
Spin generation is average requiring a heavy slice to pull off what other current gen paddles can do with half the effort. Power is non-existent and requires a good bit of weight to match what you’re likely already familiar with. So why would anyone choose this paddle? I can think of a few reasons:
If paddle life is important to you, the Spartus Ballista will last longer than a normal thermoform paddle. And if you have a tennis background with the ability to generate your own power, then this could be worth a try.
For those that are new to the sport or loving your current paddle that’s likely thermoformed, I think it’s safe to give this a pass.
I do want to note that the owner of Spartus listened to customer feedback and is updating the Ballista to have a narrower handle grip. When that releases, I’ll update this post with an afterthought.