Four stops before the checkout

Rypin, Poland

Stop one

Kościół Świętej Trójcy w Rypinie

Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet: Brick Gothic, Teutonic style, most probably raised between 1340 and 1349, and already well along when Duke Władysław Garbaty of Dobrzyń and Łęczyca handed Rypin its location charter in 1345. Peaked before the tournament even started, that one. Sorry, force of habit. The records say a Holy Trinity church was erected here in 1355 from the foundation of the Dobrzyń dukes Bolesław and Władysław. Around 1400 Bishop Jakub of Korzkiew set up an altar of Corpus Christi inside, and a side chapel with its own altar was added at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Some places just keep collecting silverware.

Stop two

Kościół Ewangelicko-Augsburski w Rypinie

Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet: Five years, 1883 to 1888, bare red brick, neo-Gothic, built for the town's Lutheran community. Five years is nothing. My best five-set record took nine. Apologies, that slipped out. The clock in the tower was brought from Prague in 1911 and has kept this town honest ever since, which is more than any official ever did for me, and there it goes again, I can hear myself. It remains the church of the Evangelical-Augsburg parish in Rypin, in the Pomeranian-Greater Poland diocese. Still active, still on the calendar. Unlike certain people standing here.

Stop three

Plac Sienkiewicza

Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet: In 1345 Duke Władysław Garbaty of Łęczyca and Dobrzyń gave Rypin its charter and did the thing I could never manage: he moved the whole operation to a better site and made it stick. The new town was laid out around this market square, with ground set aside in the very same document for a church, which is what I would call a favourable draw. The older stronghold stood where the village of Starorypin is now. Seven centuries on, his square is still the centre of town. I changed my grip once and lost two seasons to it. Different sport, I know.

Stop four

Kościół Najświętszego Serca Jezusa Chrystusa w Rypinie

Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet: Now this is a record, and records I understand. The parish of St Stanislaus Kostka was erected on 11 April 1982 by Bishop Bogdan Sikorski of Płock, the cornerstone went down on 10 June 1984, the building was finished in 1990 and consecrated on 16 September that year by Bishop Zygmunt Kamiński. Six years start to finish; I have taken longer than that to lose a title. Then in 1993 came the Last Supper window, 212 square metres, the largest sacred stained-glass window in Europe. Europe. Nobody has taken it off them yet. I held mine two seasons. Enough about me.

The Rypin, Poland track

Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Okay wait — the light on this thing. The Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet — yes, Carlitos as in Carlos Alcaraz's own junior line, we stan a legacy collab — is the last stop before a full-size frame, made for players 145 to 155 cm tall, so basically your 11-to-12-year-old who is about to outgrow everything you own.

Specs, because we're a specs account now: 26 inches (660 mm) long, a 100-square-inch head, 240 grams unstrung, balanced at 320 mm, strung 16×17 for that open-pattern pop. The frame is aluminum, which means it survives the tournament bag, the bike ride to practice, and the eight-second clip where it gets spun on one finger.

It's giving last-racquet-before-a-real-racquet energy, and honestly? That's the content.

Now the collab nobody had on their board: Rypin, Poland. Micro-destination. Massively underrated. Zero crowds in your shot. The Holy Trinity church is 14th-century brick Gothic, and at golden hour that red brick does numbers — the algorithm literally cannot look away.

Plac Sienkiewicza is the main-square-core town center where the whole feed comes together, and the entire town walks in an afternoon, which is one clean story arc, maybe two. Is the group getting this? A junior racquet with 100 square inches of forgiveness, filmed against six-hundred-year-old brick? Hashtag court to old town. Hashtag Rypin era.

The range on this frame is genuinely unreal — it goes everywhere from a nine-a.m. cardio tennis class in a strip-lit hall to a red-brick alley in Rypin at golden hour, no wardrobe change required. It is also perfect for the slow lap of Plac Sienkiewicza, because that square is the whole town's living room and 240 grams is nothing to carry while you're hunting the angle.

Light frame, big sweet spot, honest string bed — the kid hits cleaner after cardio tennis, the clips look better, everybody wins. Link in bio. The bio is this page.

Buy on Amazon

Burn, Laugh and Learn

THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet

Babolat Carlitos 26 Junior Tennis Racquet