When you’re looking at the specs and design of the Tour Force you don’t notice anything special per say. They have a very traditional build with higher quality materials.
Although it may not be the most innovative paddle, it has everything done right.
It’s a classic shaped paddle that is 15.75″ long and 7.75″ wide. This player friendly classic shape gives you a larger size sweet spot that sits in the middle of the paddle.
Its carbon fiber face and thin core is a combination that gives you that all-court playability.
Its 8.0 oz weight puts it in the midweight category, but it’s slightly head heavy so you can feel the weight more than other 8.0 oz paddles. It has a shorter handle length at 4.5″ and a slightly slimmer handle grip that is 4.25″. If you prefer thicker handle grips it’s easy to build up the grip using PBPRO's tacky overgrips.
The handle has this ribbed grip that I wasn’t really a fan of but it didn’t bother me either. I was indifferent about it. Some people I shared the paddle with liked the ribbed grip and others were indifferent like I was. It’s a preference thing.
Attacking
The paddle is slightly head heavy had a little pop to it that helped when I was being aggressive or countering attacks. It wasn’t an overwhelming amount of power or anything, but it was noticeable.
The grit on the face went smooth after the first day I played with it, but I still thought it had a medium spin rating. Its thinner core and midweight nature made it easy to accelerate through the ball to generate spin.
The paddle had enough power to get the speed I needed on put aways and higher balls. I was pleased with how it performed when attacking lower balls too, I could get the power and spin I needed there. I thought the paddle was lower on the forgiveness scale, though. I found myself catching the top of the net more often than usual when I miss hit push dinks, aggressive slice dinks and volley dinks. I didn’t like that.
