this right here is the greatest tennis shoe of all time it's the Nike Zoom Vapor nine and a half and
why is it the greatest tennis shoe of all time because it was designed for the greatest player
of all time Roger Federer now before I get into reviewing this shoe I want to tell you a little
bit about the history of Nike shoes and why do you care about what I say well I used to play division
one college tennis and I've been a tennis coach for over 30 years and I happen to be a huge Nike
fan some of my favorite players of all time used to wear Nike shoes so I always wore Nike shoes
and started back in the day with the McEnroe Air Trainer once then I had the Agassi challenge Tech
twos and of course one of my favorite Nike shoes of all time the air oscillates that Pete Sampras
wore and when Roger Federer came on the scene Nike designed him a vapor shoe but I'll be honest with
you it was absolutely horrible I bought those shoes but they had hard plastics on the side
and they were extremely uncomfortable they gave me blisters and what happened about 10 years ago was
the following one of the greatest shoe designers ever Tinker Hatfield that designed a lot of the
Jordan shoes was hired by Nike to design a tennis shoe for Roger Federer so Hatfield and Federer sat
together in a room and Roger started telling Hatfield what he wanted out of a tennis shoe
tennis shoes generally are uncomfortable because you have to have a lot of stability because of
the hard stops that you make when you play tennis when you make those lateral movements
so generally speaking tennis shoes tend to be a little bit stiff and uncomfortable it's
not a shoe that you would wear outside of playing tennis so Federer and many other
players by the way prefer to wear running shoes when they're off the court so Federer
told Hatfield that he wanted his tennis shoe to feel like a running shoe and as Federer was
describing what he wanted out of a tennis shoe Hatfield was drawing on his iPad and the result
was this masterpiece which is in my opinion the greatest tennis shoe that has ever been designed
so what's so great about this shoe well first of all it does feel like a running shoe it's
extremely light and it's unbelievably comfortable because of the way the shoe
is designed with the materials that I used you have the mesh design in the front it's overall
very light feeling it has a very comfortable tongue and something that's super important it
doesn't require any break-in so in the middle of a match you can take out the brand new pair
of Zoom Vapor 9.0 or 9.5 you can wear them and they don't require any break-in they're gonna
feel like as if you've been playing with them for a long time and I can tell you
that I've tried hundreds of different tennis shoes and these are by far my favorites for
the simple reason that they are extremely comfortable they don't give me blisters
now interestingly the shoe even though it's light and very comfortable it does give you
a lot of lateral support so when you make those hard lateral stops the materials on the side of
the shoe are sturdy enough to provide you with that so important stability when you're moving
laterally on the tennis court now one interesting thing about the Federer Zoom Vapor was that this
part of the shoe in the middle was made out of carbon fiber and I saw these shoes on sale on a
memorabilia website and somebody bought them for twenty five hundred dollars Roger Federer indeed
had carbon fiber in the middle of the shoe to give him even more stability then we get to enjoy
now there's one little issue with the zoom vapor and that's the fact that the tongue scrunches up
on the bottom when you tie the shoe super tight that is the only issue that I see with the zoom
vapor is that you can actually see your sock through the top of the shoe and the tongue
simply isn't wide enough for example on the zoom Vapor Jordans that I recently reviewed you can
check out a link in the description if you want to watch that video the tongue is a lot wider and
it's actually made out of a Little Bit Stronger materials and is far superior than the tongue on
the zoom Vapor nine and a half and guys I love the sole and the zoom Vapor nine and a half because
it's a super simple design I don't like the sole to be too complicated and I find that with this
sole you can play on Hardcourt you can play on Clay gives you plenty of traction and also the
shoe is cushioned really well even though it's a shoe that's lower to the ground than other
shoes I do feel like it's very comfortable I'm the type of guy who has bad knees and there's
enough cushioning here where I don't feel a lot of pain when I'm bouncing around on the court so
the zoom vapor 9.0 and the zoom Vapor 9.5 was around for a long time and I believe that Nike
sold a lot of them but naturally they needed to upgrade the shoe and they did they changed the
sole on the zoom Vapor X they made it into a more futuristic design it wasn't too bad and they also
changed the side of the shoe to give it a little bit more stability which was not a bad upgrade
the most important elements of the zoom Vapor shoe were still intact and the zoom Vapor X felt
very similar to the zoom Vapor 9.0 and nine and a half how about style this is something that I
look for in tennis shoes you couldn't catch me with a pair of ugly tennis shoes on the court
and in my opinion the zoom Vapor 9 through 10 were some of the best looking shoes that were
ever designed and it's not only that but Nike provided the customers with so many options on
colors there were so many cool color combinations when a new Zoom Vapor came out there was always
at least four or five choices of of colors that you could select so now you gotta explain to me
what happened why did Nike get rid of the zoom Vapor 9 through 10 they came out with the zoom
Vapor Pro which was absolute garbage compared to the shoe that I just showed you take a look at
this all those intricate details on the top of the shoe were gone no more mesh just a plastic piece
covering the entire shoe the lace is going off to the side a paper thin tongue and a shoe that felt
a hundred times worse compared to the previous model the only thing that stayed the same was
the sole which was identical to the zoom Vapor X but everything else changed on the zoom Vapor
shoe and quite frankly Nike destroyed the best shoe that they've ever made so the zoom vapor Pro
didn't last too long there's an upgraded version now which quite frankly is not much better this
is a completely different shoe compared to the original Zoom Vapor this feels more like the the
cage that Rafa wears and it's not a bad shoe it's got good cushioning but there's absolutely nothing
that feels like the old Zoom Vapor shoe the zoom Vapor Pro not a bad shoe at all some people might
like this one but me personally there's absolutely no resemblance to the original Zoom Vapor shoe and
there's also the zoom Vapor 11 which does feel a little bit better than the zoom Vapor Pro
it does have really good cushioning and it's a comfortable shoe but again there's absolutely no
resemblance to the original Zoom Vapor shoe which in my opinion is the greatest tennis shoe that's
ever been designed now I can tell you that Nike is doing some great things as of late they brought
back the Air Trainer ones from Mcenroe and they also brought back the zoom Vapor nine and a half
so right now you can get this shoe I don't know how much longer it's going to be available but
I'm so thankful for Nike for bringing back this shoe because here's the facts this shoe is one of
the most iconic shoes of all time but it's only that it was also worn by the most iconic player
this video is not sponsored by Nike I buy all my Nike shoes in fact if you're a tennis player
and if you want to get paid to wear Nike products you got to be ranked at least top 20 in the world