i'm an advanced player and i've been playing with babolat for the past 6 years. your choice depends on your style of play, more specifically your groundstrokes and where you tend to win your points. i'm primarily a baseliner. i've been playing with the babolat pure control team standard which is an incredibly solid, vibration-free racket. as the name implies, the racket gives you a lot of control, meaning you can take a nice healthy cut at the ball and have a reasonably good idea where it is going. the downside of this racket is it's a bit on the heavy side and might feel sluggish if you have quick, whippy groundstrokes. which brings me to the 'storm' -- basically a lighter version of the pure control with the same solid feel. the pure drive made popular by andy roddick is light and powerful -- nice for serve and volley -- but less predictable in my opinion from the baseline. i just found it hard to control the ball, particularly when i took a full swing. presently i am trying the new nadal aeropro, which is a topspinner's dream -- fairly light, vibration free, and, for what it's worth, has one of the nicest paint jobs i've ever seen. so i think your best 2 options are the storm, as used by gonzalez, or the aeropro cortex, as used by nadal, and this is assuming you play from the backcourt w/ some spin off both sides and occasionally come to net to knock off the volley. good luck.