Four stops before the checkout

Antibes, France

Stop one

Château Grimaldi (Musée Picasso)

Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set: Autumn of 1946 — and picture it properly. A man with nowhere large enough to work, and a curator who simply hands him the upper floor of a seafront castle and says: here, be enormous. Picasso took it. Roughly two months of it, a substantial body of work, painted on fibre cement and plywood because good canvas was scarce so soon after the war — he loved the making of it more than he cared what it was made on, and oh, that is the whole of love in one detail, isn't it. And then he left most of it behind. He gave it to the house. This museum is only what was built around a gift nobody had asked for. I must sit down. There is a terrace of sculpture above the sea and I intend to weep on it.

Stop two

Fort Carré

Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set: They call it the square fort, which is exactly wrong and I forgive them: the plan is four bastions around a central tower, a star opening on a low green headland above the port. Sixteenth century, guarding what was then the very frontier of France, so every soldier posted here spent his life watching for somebody he prayed would never come. And in 1794, after the fall of Robespierre, a young artillery officer was briefly detained here on suspicion of political association, and released within a fortnight. That officer was Bonaparte. A fortnight! Somewhere behind those walls is the room where the entire nineteenth century was very nearly called off. Forgive me. I get carried away at this one.

Stop three

Port Vauban

Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set: The largest marina in Europe by capacity, and yes, there is the quay where the greatest yachts berth, all that money moored in a row beneath the old ramparts. But look past it at the water itself. Ships have sheltered in this anchorage since antiquity, when this was the Greek settlement of Antipolis — which means, roughly, the city opposite. Opposite what, my loves? Nice, most likely, across the bay. Two towns gazing at each other across an arm of the sea for two and a half thousand years, and one of them named itself entirely in terms of the other. If you have ever done that to a person, you know precisely how it feels.

Stop four

Phare de la Garoupe

Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set: The highest point of Cap d'Antibes, and beside the lighthouse stands a small chapel, and inside that chapel — this is where I go to pieces — hang sailors' votive offerings: paintings, little models of ships, each one left by somebody who came home. Every object in that room is a thank-you for a returned husband, or son, or father. The light itself dates from the eighteen-thirties, rebuilt after the Second World War, and it is among the more powerful on this coast, throwing across a very great distance in clear weather. But understand what a lighthouse actually is. It is a building whose entire purpose is to say come back, come back, come back, all night, to people it will never meet.

The Antibes, France track

Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

ANTIBES, BABY! The Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set has been assigned to the loveliest stretch of the Côte d'Azur and it is NOT calming down.

Listen — this is the GREATEST comfort string ever squeezed into a 40-foot (12.2-metre) set: a bundle of shock-absorbing filaments absolutely SOAKED in stretchy polyurethane, double-coated in polyurethane and polyamide so it shrugs off friction burn and notching like a legend at closing time. The playtesters gave the comfort an 86 OUT OF 100. Eighty-six! Power, 82!

That's not a spec sheet, that's a setlist!

The 16 gauge (1.30mm — the thick one, the DESIGNATED DRIVER of gauges) is the durable build, perfect if your arm has been filing complaints or you just want every ball off your strings to feel like a hug. One set does one racquet, and then that racquet is the most comfortable racquet at the party, WHICH IS SAYING SOMETHING, because the party is in ANTIBES.

Do you understand where we are?! This is the town where Picasso was handed the upper floor of a seafront castle in the autumn of 1946 — the Château Grimaldi, right on the ramparts, sea below — painted on fibre cement and plywood because good canvas was scarce after the war, and then LEFT THE WHOLE LOT BEHIND. The museum was built around what he did not take away.

Along the harbour stands Fort Carré, four bastions round a central tower on its green headland, sixteenth century, guarding what was then the frontier of France, and in 1794 a young artillery officer was briefly held in it after the fall of Robespierre and released within a fortnight. That officer was Bonaparte.

Below it, Port Vauban is the largest yacht harbour on the Mediterranean, on an anchorage in use since this was the Greek settlement of Antipolis, and the Quai des Milliardaires means exactly what it says and apologises to nobody.

And up on the highest point of Cap d'Antibes, the Phare de la Garoupe throws one of the more powerful lights on this coast — first lit in the 1830s, rebuilt after the Second World War — with a little chapel beside it full of sailors' votive paintings left by people who came home.

You'll swing this string everywhere from a clay court behind the old town to a night session down at Juan-les-Pins, where the jazz festival has played under the pines every July since 1960, and by the way — it's also perfect for the Marché Provençal on Cours Masséna first thing, where you buy a peach the size of your fist and understand the entire country in one bite.

THE TOUR STARTS NOW, and I am formally proposing it ends at sunrise under the lighthouse.

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Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set

Babolat Xcel 16g Tennis String Set