FOLLOW US

Facebook Instagram Youtube X-twitter

Burn, Laugh and Learn

BOOK A CLINIC

THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set and the flag of Turkey combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The red field fills the frame with the white crescent and five-pointed white star toward the hoist, the cloth lit from one side so a single strong fold runs through the field, and the blue string set is composed into the arrangement so its coil sits inside the arc of the crescent, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed with Mount Ararat above the Iğdır plain in Iğdır, Turkey. An enormous isolated snow-capped volcanic cone rising straight out of flat brown ground with a smaller second cone on its shoulder and no foothills in front of it. Camera near ground level looking up across a worn stone irrigation channel step, early morning raking light with the summit catching first sun while the plain is still blue: farm workers moving down the rows of an apricot orchard with baskets, a flock of sheep crossing the track behind a herder, a pickup bouncing along the field edge trailing dust. The string set lies on the stone step in the near foreground, nobody holding or using it.
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the Aras river bird research and education station in Iğdır, Turkey. A small low field station beside reedbeds and shallow water, mist nets strung between poles across the reed edge and ringing tables under an awning. Eye level straight on in bright hard midday sun: a ringer holding a small bird in the photographer's grip while a colleague reads out a wing measurement, a student writing on a clipboard, volunteers walking the net line, a flock lifting off the water behind. The string set rests on the wooden railing of the ringing table in the middle distance to one side, untouched.
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the ruins of Sürmeli in Iğdır, Turkey. Broken grey stone citadel walls and tower stumps on high ground above the Aras river gorge near the closed Armenian border. Elevated camera looking down, wide, the ruin and the valley dominating and the product small in frame, golden hour with the light going long and orange across the stonework: a shepherd bringing goats up the slope through the wall line, two hikers picking their way along the crest, a jandarma vehicle parked on the border track far below, swifts turning over the gorge. The string set sits on a bare stone parapet at the edge of frame, nobody near it.
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the Caravanserai of Zor in Iğdır, Turkey. A long low rectangular block of cut stone with a single arched portal and a barrel-vaulted hall inside, standing alone on open ground with no town around it. Close and intimate with shallow depth of field, after dark under a clear cold sky: a lamp and a small fire inside the portal throwing warm light onto the vault ribs, a family who have driven out for the evening spreading a cloth and pouring tea, a boy running his hand along the stone, headlights swinging across the facade as another car arrives, the Milky Way over the roofline. The string set sits on a flat stone bench in mid-frame with the portal soft behind it, nobody touching it.
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set and the flag of Turkey combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The red field fills the frame with the white crescent and five-pointed white star toward the hoist, the cloth lit from one side so a single strong fold runs through the field, and the blue string set is composed into the arrangement so its coil sits inside the arc of the crescent, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.

Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set

Iğdır, Turkey  ·  Strings > 16g

Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set

This is the sibling nobody photographs and everybody restrings with: 1.30 mm of multifilament that swallows shock and still hits like it means it. Before checkout, though — Iğdır. The light on Mount Ararat from up there is genuinely absurd and it hasn't stopped posting about it.

↓   Tour Iğdır, Turkey

Four stops before the checkout

Iğdır, Turkey
01
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed with Mount Ararat above the Iğdır plain in Iğdır, Turkey. An enormous isolated snow-capped volcanic cone rising straight out of flat brown ground with a smaller second cone on its shoulder and no foothills in front of it. Camera near ground level looking up across a worn stone irrigation channel step, early morning raking light with the summit catching first sun while the plain is still blue: farm workers moving down the rows of an apricot orchard with baskets, a flock of sheep crossing the track behind a herder, a pickup bouncing along the field edge trailing dust. The string set lies on the stone step in the near foreground, nobody holding or using it.
Stop one

Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum

Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set: Hats off here. This is the Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum, opened in October 1999, raised for Turkish civilians killed in the conflicts that came through this borderland between 1915 and 1920, and it presents those years from the Turkish perspective. Five curved, sword-like concrete blades meet 43.5 metres up, described as the tallest monument in Turkey, with a museum beneath holding photographs, documents and exhibits from the period. This province passed between Ottoman, Russian and briefly Armenian control before joining the Turkish Republic in 1920. You can see the monument clear across the plain. We will stand quiet a minute.

02
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the Aras river bird research and education station in Iğdır, Turkey. A small low field station beside reedbeds and shallow water, mist nets strung between poles across the reed edge and ringing tables under an awning. Eye level straight on in bright hard midday sun: a ringer holding a small bird in the photographer's grip while a colleague reads out a wing measurement, a student writing on a clipboard, volunteers walking the net line, a flock lifting off the water behind. The string set rests on the wooden railing of the ringing table in the middle distance to one side, untouched.
Stop two

Ejder Caravanserai (Harmandöven Caravanserai)

Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set: Now this I understand. A harbour, only dry. Şerafettin Ejder Bey, a commander of the old Surmari region, raised this in the Seljuk period for caravans working the Batum to Tabriz road, a side road of the Silk Road, and a caravan is nothing but a slow convoy over a sea of dust. No courtyard at all, just one great vaulted hall through a carved stone portal, counted among the finest of its type left in Anatolia. Restored in 2010 by the General Directorate of Foundations. Thirty kilometres out of town, which is half a day's sail and no grog at the end of it.

03
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the ruins of Sürmeli in Iğdır, Turkey. Broken grey stone citadel walls and tower stumps on high ground above the Aras river gorge near the closed Armenian border. Elevated camera looking down, wide, the ruin and the valley dominating and the product small in frame, golden hour with the light going long and orange across the stonework: a shepherd bringing goats up the slope through the wall line, two hikers picking their way along the crest, a jandarma vehicle parked on the border track far below, swifts turning over the gorge. The string set sits on a bare stone parapet at the edge of frame, nobody near it.
Stop three

Tuzluca Salt Caves

Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set: Salt, lads. A whole mountain of it, and every grain left behind by an ancient sea that gave up and went home, so there was water here once, which is the first decent news I have had in this province. They have cut galleries hundreds of metres into that rock since antiquity, with organised mining recorded through the medieval centuries and the modern works officially running since 1923, leaving man-made caverns you could lose a ship inside. Holds about twenty degrees all year round. Now they run wellness sessions and concerts down there. Salt air below decks. Wouldn't have credited it.

04
cardio camp — the Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the Caravanserai of Zor in Iğdır, Turkey. A long low rectangular block of cut stone with a single arched portal and a barrel-vaulted hall inside, standing alone on open ground with no town around it. Close and intimate with shallow depth of field, after dark under a clear cold sky: a lamp and a small fire inside the portal throwing warm light onto the vault ribs, a family who have driven out for the evening spreading a cloth and pouring tea, a boy running his hand along the stone, headlights swinging across the facade as another car arrives, the Milky Way over the roofline. The string set sits on a flat stone bench in mid-frame with the portal soft behind it, nobody touching it.
Stop four

Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı)

Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set: Five thousand one hundred and thirty-seven metres, the highest ground in Turkey, and the plain you are standing on sits at about eight hundred and fifty, which is why the thing looks like a wave that never broke. Lesser Ararat beside it, 3,896 metres, neat as a spare mast. Judeo-Christian tradition puts Noah's Ark at rest up there, so I will say this much: it is the only mountain I have ever met that used to be a port. Friedrich Parrot made the first recorded ascent in 1829. Snow year-round. Sets the weather, the horizon and the whole province.

The Iğdır, Turkey track

Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

<p>Okay so this is the one everybody actually strings. Xplore in 16 gauge, which is 1.30 millimetres, sitting exactly in the middle of the line between the chunky 15L and the whippy 17. Multifilament construction, one hundred per cent polyamide all the way through — filaments, matrix and sheath. Twelve-metre set. Made in France, solvent-free process.

That is the spec sheet and it is genuinely giving.</p>
<p>Here is why the middle gauge is the smart pick and not the boring one. Multifilament is bundled fibre, so it deforms around the ball and gives you power and a soft, cushioned response instead of the board-like feel of a stiff polyester.

At 1.30 you keep almost all of that comfort but you also keep some control and some string life, which is why Babolat aims this at intermediates, juniors and anyone whose arm has started filing complaints. It kills vibration at impact.

If you have ever finished a match with a hot spot in your elbow, this is the fix that does not cost you the whole game.</p>
<p>Iğdır is the light. Genuinely.

It is the driest city in Turkey, averaging 261 millimetres of rain a year, sitting at 850 metres on a flat plain, and Mount Ararat — 5,137 metres, about seventy per cent of it inside Iğdır's borders — just stands there at the end of every street.

You will use this string everywhere from a hard court on that plain in forty degrees to an indoor hall in Kars in the snow, and by the way, it is perfect for apricot season: Iğdır is famous for its apricots and its cotton, the orchards go off all at once, and a soft string bed is exactly what you want when you have spent the morning eating fruit off a tree instead of warming up.</p>
<p>One honest note, because that is the whole brand: multifilament loses tension faster than poly.

Play it fresh. It is not a string you leave in the bag for a season and then post about.</p>
<p>Babolat Xplore 16g Tennis String Set</p>

Buy on Amazon

Related Products

Related products

Scroll to Top