01
Stop one
Obelisco a la Batalla de Las Piedras
Babolat Evo Strike 2nd Gen Tennis Racquet: Nobody ever records what an army had for breakfast, and it is the first thing I want to know. On 18 May 1811 José Gervasio Artigas led the forces of the Banda Oriental to their first great victory over the Spanish royalist troops of José Posadas, and this obelisk was inaugurated on 25 May 1911 for the centennial, the work of the Uruguayan sculptor Juan Manuel Ferrari, with a bronze Victory at the top. It rises in Parque Artigas on ground associated with the battlefield. That day counts as the first major triumph of the independence movement in the Río de la Plata, and the anniversary is a national holiday. Holidays I understand completely. They are for eating.
02
Stop two
Parque Artigas
Babolat Evo Strike 2nd Gen Tennis Racquet: This is the memorial landscape of the battle itself, ground associated with 18 May 1811, when Artigas defeated the Spanish forces and opened the campaign for the independence of the Banda Oriental. The centennial obelisk of 1911 stands here along with commemorative installations honouring the revolutionary army, and in 2013 the park was declared a National Historical Monument of Uruguay. Each May the official commemorations are held on this ground. The rest of the year it is the main green space of Las Piedras, which means grills, smoke on the air, and families carrying far more meat than they could possibly finish. I have never once believed they could not finish it.
03
Stop three
Parroquia San Isidro Labrador
Babolat Evo Strike 2nd Gen Tennis Racquet: San Isidro Labrador is the farmer's saint, which makes him the saint standing behind every loaf and every cut of meat this town has ever put on a table, so naturally the place grew in the eighteenth century around a chapel dedicated to him and was long called San Isidro de Las Piedras. The church stands at Lavalleja and General Flores, facing Plaza Batlle y Ordóñez. Its archives are of exceptional historical value and include the records of those who died in the Battle of Las Piedras on 18 May 1811, names kept properly, which matters more than anything I could say. It is still the principal parish of the city. If there is a bakery on this street, I will find it.
04
Stop four
Museo a Cielo Abierto Batalla de Las Piedras
Babolat Evo Strike 2nd Gen Tennis Racquet: An open-air museum is my kind of museum, served the way food should be served: outdoors, in the place it came from. Inaugurated in 2015, it puts nothing behind glass and instead reads the landscape of 18 May 1811 itself, walking you across the terrain where the forces of Artigas defeated the Spanish column of José Posadas. Its displays also carry the history and culture of the community that grew up beside the battlefield, which is the part visitors usually skip and the part I would linger on. With Parque Artigas and the 1911 obelisk it forms one memorial precinct, maintained by the department of Canelones. Walk it slowly. Then eat.
The Evo Strike is Babolat's Pure Strike idea made affordable, and the second generation is the one worth having: the frame went from 280 g to 290 g unstrung, and that extra ten grams is the whole difference — it is what turns a light frame that gets pushed around into a light frame that holds its line. Las Piedras would approve of the maths.
This is a town whose entire reputation rests on one afternoon in 1811 when a smaller force did not get pushed around.
The numbers. Head size 102 square inches. Length 27 inches. Unstrung 290 g plus or minus 7, which is 10.2 oz; strung it comes in around 10.8 oz. Balance 320 mm. Stiffness 70 RA. A 16×19 string pattern — open, forgiving, and the pattern that lets a mid-swing player actually get the ball up and over.
Graphite construction, Syntec Evo grip, and it ships strung, which matters more than people admit when you are buying your second racquet rather than your fifth.
Who it is for is the honest question and the answer is clean: an improving player who wants Pure Strike control without Pure Strike weight, and who does not want to pay tour prices to find out whether they like the feel. You will get use out of it everywhere from a club court in Canelones to the hard courts twenty kilometres south in Montevideo.
And by the way, this is wine country — Canelones is the heart of Uruguayan viticulture — so a racquet that arrives strung and ready is the one that gets you off the court and into a tannat before the good tables go.
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