Racket vs. Racquet
First Published January, 2024
Same Product / Different Names
Left: National Metal Racket Company
Right: Dayton Steel Racquet Company
When I first started collecting tennis rackets over 30 years ago, I found that the terminology related to vintage tennis equipment had never been firmly established and we really aren’t that much closer to standardizing racket terminology today. Other sports whose equipment is pursued by collectors, such as baseball and golf, have developed very specific collecting terminology for describing the implements of their respective games.
The most obvious example of term ambiguity in tennis is the dual use of “racket” and “racquet” in the same context. The Dayton Steel Racquet Company, which was founded in 1923 chose to use “racquet”, but virtually every racket maker before and since then has opted for using “racket”.
The definition found on grammarist.com in the box below covers this topic very well and names “racket” as the “preferred spelling”.
However, the bottom line for me is that both Jeanne Cherry and Sigfried Kuebler, who authored the two books that really launched racket collecting to the next level, both used “racket” in their writing. My take on it is that if “racket” was the choice of Jeanne and Sigi, it should be the choice for the rest of us of in the tennis collecting community, as well.
Good Collecting.
Racket is the usual spelling of the word for the paddle-like device used in net games, such as tennis. Racquet is an alternative form – it was originally a misspelling of the French word, and has appeared to varying degrees since entering English in the 19th century – now mainly confined to certain contests, appearing especially in names (e.g., West River Racquet Club) and in reference to the sports of squash and racquetball. In tennis, racket is the preferred spelling. This is the case throughout the English-speaking world, but the preference for racket is strongest in North America.