The most frustrating thing in tennis apart from perhaps; playing badly and losing, is not being able to hang on to your racket properly. This annoying problem is often caused by sweat or the greasy residue left from the application of sunscreen.  Sweat and sunscreen management is crucial to your tournament routines both for sun safety and for optimum performance on court. 

Here are some tips to help: 

Never put your sunscreen on with your playing hand. Sunscreen leeches down into your pores of your skin waiting for heat to bring it out.  Then if you have touched your grip (another porous material), even if you wash your hands thoroughly you will recontaminate your hand from the grip. The only way past the problem is to thoroughly wash your hands and to replace your grip tape and that’s not that easy if you’re in the middle of a set.

Secret Tips:

1.     Save the “refresher towel” from various fast food chicken places. They are great for cutting through grease on your hands.

2.      Don’t let other people handle your grips. Maybe they have just returned from the local greasy spoon. 

To sunscreen your non-dominant hand put screen on your dominant arm and try to smooth it over the non-dominant arm in a circulating manor or use a handy spray mist, being careful not to over spray onto the hands. 

Use non-greasy sunscreen. These “dry” sunscreens are fantastic for active people. They offer SPF 30, maximum UV-A and UV-B protection with two hours of water resistance. The thing is that, because the Clear Mist works so well, you find yourself applying it as part of your routine and not as a necessary evil that you will try to avoid the longer a match wares on.

Sunsenseä Clear Mist is the best of these “non-greasy” sunscreen products. It is quick to apply with the spray nozzle and is very dab-on-able for your face. 

Don’t forget your ears; if you wear a baseball style cap your ears are constantly exposed, so blast them with screen often. 

Don’t forget to sunscreen the backs of your legs because people have a natural feel for the sun and will turn their back to the sun to protect their face and consequently burn behind them. The same can be said for the neck so pay extra attention. 

 

extra grips, non-greasy sun cream, broad sweatband, thick towel. 

Wear a broad sweatband on your racket holding arm, because they stop the sweat from running down the back of your hand with gravity and from the body’s centrifugal force created when striking a ball. 

Have enough shirts (men) or towels to be able to dry off your hands after every point. Excess moisture from clothing will eventually work its way onto your grip, so try to change as often as required to stay dry. 

I remember playing in Indonesia were it was so hot we had to towel off every point. The problem was the towels were “hard and scratchy” thus turning the “drying off” process into a “sanding off” exercise that proved to be very painfully long after the match had finished.  

Keep in mind the more you sweat the more you should reapply your non-greasy sunscreen and always have extra grips on call. 

By keeping an eye on your sweat and sunscreen management, you will always have that solid feel of a perfectly dry grip and by putting Sunscreen onto your match “sit down routine” you will be looking after your health and wellbeing.