Tomás Avila on form, weight, and the year ahead

Three national titles. Two off-seasons. One paddle, designed alongside us over the course of fourteen months. Tomás Avila on the work, the weight, and what he has stopped chasing.

Avila greets you the way he plays — without fuss. We meet at the Brooklyn atelier on a damp morning. He is wearing the same charcoal hoodie he was wearing the day we first sat down to sketch the North Star, and a pair of glasses he didn't have then.

On the design

I asked for two things, he says. More reach. And less work to keep it stable on a mishit. The North Star answers both — an elongated face, a counter-balanced butt cap, and a swing weight tuned to the ounce. It took fourteen prototypes. The fifteenth I won a tournament with.

I have stopped trying to win every point. I am trying, now, to play the right one.