The beckoning cat has sold noodles, guarded shopfronts and now, apparently, wins kitchen battles. The Lucky Cat is the most charming paddle in AIXO's Ghost series – T700 carbon face, 16mm cold-pressed core, around £30 – and it has become the quiet favourite of our crossover customers.
Do not let the whimsy fool you into reading it as a toy. The T700 carbon face puts it a full class above the fibreglass paddles most beginners accidentally buy, with the kind of clean, communicative contact a tennis player expects from a decent string bed. The deep 16mm core plays soft and forgiving – imagine an oversize frame strung in the low 40s – which is exactly the platform on which the sport's soft game is learned. Dinks land short because the paddle is not fighting to overpower them; resets soak up pace the way soft strings kill a heavy incoming ball.
For tennis players, the Lucky Cat's control-first character solves the biggest crossover problem: everything you hit in your first month wants to go three feet too deep. A plush paddle buys you margin while your hands recalibrate, and keeps club night fun in the meantime.
Superstition optional, but noted: several regulars now refuse to play without the cat. Fortune, as the saying goes, favours the well-equipped.
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Shop the AIXO Ghost Lucky Cat at Central Tennis
In stock now at Central Tennis. Expert stringing and racket fitting available in store.
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