Tilt Top Tennis Rackets

First Published, June 2024

Last Updated, August 2024

While Walter Wingfield’s initial ( and extremely rare) rackets had straight heads, the first widely distributed version of the “Sphairistike” or lawn tennis racket was an offset tilt top version made by Jefferies & Malings that is shown in the attached photo. Virtually all collectors and tennis historians agree that the pictured racket has the predominant shape of early lawn tennis rackets, however the actual term to describe this early racket has multiple versions, some of which are listed below.

A growing number of collectors have adopted the term “tilt top” over the years to describe this early racket design. The name of the next step in the evolution of the lawn tennis racket is the “flat top’, which is universally accepted and used in the tennis community. Tilt top fits well with flat top and both describe the actual appearance of the earliest rackets. And when you stop to think about it, who really wants a “lopsided” racket in their collection?

I occasionally see rackets in internet auctions from the post-tilt top era with decals (which were first introduced around 1890) being described as having a “slightly tilted head”. They may be slightly tilted, but that is almost certainly a deformity not an intentional design characteristic. A few makers, such as Wright & Ditson, continued to keep a token tilt top racket in their racket lineup until around 1890, but they were fully tilted heads.

The primary reason that pre-lawn tennis rackets were produced with tilted heads is that in earlier games, like court tennis where the solid balls had very little bounce, the irregularly shaped head made it easier for a player to return the ball off a low bounce.

Early lawn tennis players quickly became accustomed to the higher bouncing hollow rubber balls that were initially imported from Germany by Wingfield for inclusion in his new tennis boxed sets. While they readily accepted the new vulcanized balls, players began to find that tilt top rackets made it more difficult to execute overhead shots, as they abandoned the underhand serve, while also developing the overhead smash stroke.

As a result, the demand for tilt top lawn tennis rackets began to wane and by the mid-1880’s, they were essentially obsolete. The last player to win a nationally recognized lawn tennis tournament here in the U.S. with a tilt top racket was O.E. Woodhouse who won the unofficial U.S. National Open on the grass courts of the Staten Island Cricket and Base Ball Club in September of 1880.

I have been building a collection of early lawn tennis advertising for decades and I simply haven’t ever seen an ad or a catalog featuring a post-1890 racket with a slightly tilted head. In terms of cosmetics or performance, there simply was no need for slight tilting and my years of research leads me to firmly believe that racket makers did not make post-1890 rackets with slightly tilted heads. They were created after they left their racket makers shops when they were reshaped by post-production forces, such as prolonged exposure to humidity or overly tight restringing.

Obviously, people are free to call their rackets by whatever terms they choose, whether it be lopsided, slightly tilted or tilt top, but tilt top and its successor flat top gives us some continuity to early lawn tennis racket terms.

Good Collecting.

Tilt Top Tennis Racket

Also known as

Lopsided Pear Shaped

Lobsided Spoon Shaped

Lophead Slanted

Lobbed Tilt Headed

Racket vs. Racquet

James Rivington Tennis Dealer / Spy