I needed a racket for some tennis like sport. Since the sport is kind of local to my area, there is only few offers for these rackets, and some have quite high waiting times. Since they are made from plywood anyway, I decided to make it myself.
The melamin plywood I picked was a pain to work with, and I fiddled quite a bit with tape on the wood, drill speeds and everything, to avoid tearing the surface. I still did on the back, propably pushing too hard, so I scraped off the first layer. The clean black melamin would have looked better I think, but at some point I got so annoyed that I'm happy I was able to make it at least look decent.
Did you put another piece of wood underneath to drill into? That should prevent the tearing on the underside
I tried tape only, locating it above one and the same hole on my drill press. But the idea of tightly clamping on a piece of wood came afterwards as well. Will definitely try this - should I ever decide to make another one.
Something I do to avoid blow-out with through-holes like this is to drill a small hole in the center with a twist bit, switch to an appropriately sized forstner bit, drill partway through one side, flip the part over, and finish the hole from the other side. Two entry wounds, no exit wound.