Slumping - could it be my new racquet?

I haven’t been playing well for several weeks now and, yesterday for the first time, began to suspect that perhaps it’s my new racquet.

As detailed here in this blog, I did extensive research demoing and selecting my new stick, and won the first time I played with it in an ALTA match, but I haven’t really played well since, including practices. While my partner and I did win another match a couple of weeks later, our opponents weren’t very competitive and we probably could have won it playing with the old wooden racquets – one of which is a Jack Kramer Signature – that my team recently rewarded me with as a gag gift.

So I have a dilemma: I can either stick with it for a while longer to see if it’s my self confidence, lack of match play, or some other reason for the slump OR I can try switching back to my original racquet which I haven’t played with since early May. This is a tough choice, but an important one.

This coming Saturday, we’ll be playing the last place team in our division, so I don’t expect to learn very much from that match, the last of this season. However, I’ve been asked to play tomorrow night with some men I’ve never played with before, so it’ll be safe either way (I don’t really care if I impress them or not). I guess I could play the first set with my new racquet and see how it goes; if I’m still not playing well, I can get the old stick out of the bag for the second set and see what happens. Of course, if I don’t play any better, what have I learned re: my new racquet? That it’s O.K.? That the problem is something else? At least I’ll have that much information, right?

It’s critical that I get my game back on track soon. My men’s season practices start soon and, more importantly, the USTA mixed doubles state tournament is less than 5 weeks away!