6 Best Men's Tennis Shoes

How to choose the best tennis shoes for men

With the right pair of tennis shoes, you stop thinking about shoes and focus 100% on the game.

That’s how some careful consideration can help you maximise on-court performance later. Here are 5 essential factors that make a perfect tennis shoe for you:

• Court surface
• Your playing style
• Shoe durability
• Shoe breathability
• Shoe size and fit

1. Choose tennis shoes for your court surface

Most tennis shoes are released in several versions to match various types of courts. That’s why you see the following abbreviations next to shoe names:

• HC (hard court)
• AC (all court)
• CC (clay court)

In the US, hard court is the most accessible and widely used type of tennis surface. These courts have concrete or asphalt bases and are covered with acrylic coating.

That’s why HC and AC tennis shoes are most commonly available in the US. These two types of shoes have very similar (nearly identical) traction patterns and use very thick and hard-wearing rubber for the outsole.

Clay courts, on the other hand, are more common in Europe and South America. Because of the soft nature of this court type, CC shoes are easy to tell apart from HC and AC shoes because of their sharp herringbone traction pattern with deeper treads.

Generally, it is not advised to use HC shoes on clay because they lack the necessary tread depth. Conversely, CC shoes aren’t the best for hard courts because their traction pattern is too tacky and would wear out faster.

If you are not sure about your future court surface, an AC shoe is a solid choice for beginner and recreational players.

2. Your playing style determines your tennis shoe choice

Men’s tennis shoes can be roughly divided into three categories based on their most distinctive features:

• speed
• cushioning
• stability

However, there is a lot of grey area and you can find shoes that mix two or even all three of these features.

Men’s tennis shoes in the speed category rarely exceed 12.3 oz (350g) whereas the average of tennis shoes in general is close to 13 oz (370g). In fact, the lightest speed-oriented options weigh as little as 10 oz (285g)!

Dynamic serves and volleys, explosive jumps, and hard stops all take their toll on the player’s body. Especially when one has a history of joint issues and back pain.

If that’s your case, we recommend looking for the following parameters in your future tennis shoe:

• at least 28 mm of heel stack
• at least 20 mm of forefoot stack

In our lab, we cut each tested shoe in half to measure its heel and forefoot stack precisely with a calliper.

You might as well prefer a softer type of cushioning to lower the impact of long tennis games on your body. We use a Shore A durometer to measure how soft each shoe’s cushioning foam is.

Here is the breakdown of cushioning softness in tennis shoes:

• soft: 20 HA or less
• balanced: 20 HA-30 HA
• firm: 30 HA or more

The average midsole softness of tennis shoes hovers around 28.5 HA. This footwear category tends to use firmer midsoles as the sport calls for more grounded and stable platforms. So if you are in search of a more cushioned experience, consider tennis shoes with cushioning softness of 20-30 HA.

Considering how many forceful side-to-side movements a tennis player performs during the match, it is no surprise that lateral ankle sprains are the most common type of injury in this court sport.

And even though every player can benefit from a stable tennis shoe, some rely more heavily on added support to accommodate their playing style and foot type.

Stability tennis shoes are easy to tell apart by their massive TPU stabilisers. These supportive elements are usually found on the lateral side of the midfoot and around the heel. They make a shoe significantly more rigid to prevent excessive twisting and minimise foot and ankle movement.

Aside from these visible stabilising components, a supportive tennis shoe will also have the following features (less evident but very tangible on the court):

• high torsional rigidity (hard to twist the shoe)
• stiff and padded heel counter (holds the heel and ankle very securely in place)
• wide midsole with a flange (creates a large landing and push-off area)

3. How to spot a durable tennis shoe for men

If you are an aggressive slider who regularly slashes their shoes against the court, you want to make sure that your next pair of tennis shoes is durable enough to last a while.

Tennis shoes vary a lot in their abrasion resistance. Some options are reinforced with added rubber from the ground up while others sacrifice durability for lightness.

We put each tennis shoe through several demanding durability tests in our lab to let you know which ones promise the best longevity. These tests are performed using a Dremel with a sandpaper tip at consistent speed, pressure, and exposure time.

Here are the shoe areas we test:

• Toe drag guard
• Toebox mesh
• Heel collar lining
• Outsole

Depending on the severity of damage left by the Dremel, we assess the durability of each shoe part on a 1-5 scale (5 stands for most durable). Except for the outsole where we use a tread gauge to measure the depth of the dent as accurately as possible.

4. Look for sufficient breathability

Some tennis shoes are so focused on upper durability that they tend to sacrifice in-shoe ventilation. But if you regularly play in warm temperatures, proper shoe breathability is non-negotiable.

To let you know how much airflow you can expect in a given tennis shoe, we perform several breathability tests in our lab:

• we pump smoke through the shoe’s toebox to check how quickly and easily the fabric allows it to escape
• we inspect the shoe’s half-cut upper over the LED light to locate any additcional ventilation holes
• we look at the fabric through a microscope to get a better idea of the threads and mesh structure

In the end, each men’s tennis shoe receives a breathablity score from 1 to 5 where 5 stands for most breathable. If you want to stay sweat- and odour-free, we recommend getting a shoe with a breathability score of 3 or higher.

5. Make sure you get the right size and fit

No matter how cool a tennis shoe is, you won’t be able to enjoy it if it doesn’t fit your foot right. It is important to consider both the size and width of your future pair.

Size: The right size implies that the shoe has enough length to fit your entire foot without letting the longest toe touch the upper. There should be about a thumb’s space between the toe and the upper.

We highly recommend measuring your foot length in the following cases:

• you are buying a tennis shoe for the first time (your athletic shoe size is likely to be different from a casual shoe size)
• you are purchasing from a different brand (brands have different sizing schemes)

Once you have your foot dimensions, check the corresponding brand’s size chart. And if you fall in between sizes, order both and return the ill-fitting one (but check if the retailer has a free returns policy).

Fit: A properly fitting tennis shoe will also have enough space to comfortably accommodate your foot shape comfortably, with no pinching or dead space.

If you suspect having wide or narrow feet, you can take a look at the detailed width chart offered by New Balance. But please take it with a grain of salt because brands have different approaches to shoe widths and sizes. To make matters worse, even shoes from the same brand can have vastly different toebox space and shape.