A sweet spot is a place where a combination of factors results in a maximum response for a given amount of effort. In tennis, baseball, or cricket, a given swing will result in a more powerful hit if the ball strikes the racquet or bat on the latter's sweet spot.

The sweet spot is often believed to be the same as the center of percussion

Center of percussion

The center of percussion is the point on an object where a perpendicular impact will produce translational and rotational forces which perfectly cancel each other out at some given pivot point, so that the pivot will not be moving momentarily after the impulse....

.

Sporting origin

The term originally referred to various pieces of sport

Sport

A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...

ing equipment, notably cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 and baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 bats and tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

rackets. When hitting the ball, the bat (for instance) will rebound, but there is a location along the bat where this force is completely balanced out by turning force of the bat. If the ball is hit closer to the end of the bat, the grip of the bat will try to rotate forward out of the batter's hands, whereas if the ball hits it closer to the handle, the bat's tip will try to rotate forward and drive the bat into the batter's hands. There is a small "sweet spot" where these two tendencies cancel out. The "sweet spot" location on a given baseball bat varies however it is approximately 6-1/2" from the end of the barrel.

Centre of percussion

Centre of percussion is an area located just 1/3 length of the racket above the centre of gravity. It is however not a sweetspot as sweet spot is defined as area to-be-hit to provide the strongest bounce whereas centre of percussion is the area where when the ball hits on it, there will be no vibration. Bear in mind that the centre of percussion changes according to the types of tennis string used. The thicker the string, the higher the are area of centre of percussion. Besides that, the tension of the string affects the area size of centre of percussion. The higher the tension the bigger the area of percussion. It is, in fact, the most important point to be used in the modern world today to build a tennis racket.