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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — the Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set combined with the national flag of Kenya
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — The Champions Monument in Eldoret, A bronze sculpture group of four runners arranged around a globe, striding outward in different directions, one carrying an Olympic torch and others with arms raised, a fifth figure standing on top of the globe draped in the Kenyan flag — set on a traffic island where Kaptagat Road meets Nairobi Road
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — Kipchoge Keino Stadium in Eldoret, A multi-use stadium seating about ten thousand, with a running track around the pitch and open terraced stands, standing in the town with the Eldoret Arboretum's trees directly beside it
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — The Sosiani River in Eldoret, A small clear river running through the middle of Eldoret over a bed of loose stones, with grassy banks and eucalyptus, crossed by road bridges in the town centre
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — Sergoit Hill in Eldoret, An isolated rounded hill standing out of the flat Uasin Gishu plateau grassland northeast of Eldoret, now with a golf course and game enclosures laid out around its base
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — the Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set combined with the national flag of Kenya

Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set

Eldoret, Kenya  ·  Strings > 16g

Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set

This crisp control multifilament — comfortable, spin-friendly, and far too modest to say so itself — is only filling in as your Eldoret tour guide today, and apologizes in advance for being, by every account, better than the regular one. It would feel awful if you bought it before letting it show you the City of Champions first.

↓   Tour Eldoret, Kenya

Four stops before the checkout

Eldoret, Kenya
01
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — The Champions Monument in Eldoret, A bronze sculpture group of four runners arranged around a globe, striding outward in different directions, one carrying an Olympic torch and others with arms raised, a fifth figure standing on top of the globe draped in the Kenyan flag — set on a traffic island where Kaptagat Road meets Nairobi Road
Stop one

The Champions Monument

Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set: One is not easily impressed, and one is impressed. The monument was erected by the Mediheal Group of Hospitals together with Athletics Kenya, and it marks Eldoret's identity as the City of Champions. The town sits at over 2,100 metres on the western edge of the Rift Valley, and the highlands about it — Iten, Kaptagat, Kapsabet — have produced a concentration of world-class distance runners without parallel anywhere on earth, which draws athletes from across the world to train at altitude here. Breeding, my dears. Not the sort one inherits, either: the sort earned before breakfast, at two thousand metres, every morning. It does rather put the family portraits in perspective.

02
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — Kipchoge Keino Stadium in Eldoret, A multi-use stadium seating about ten thousand, with a running track around the pitch and open terraced stands, standing in the town with the Eldoret Arboretum's trees directly beside it
Stop two

Kipchoge Keino Stadium

Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set: Now here is a gentleman. The stadium is named for Kipchoge Keino, the policeman-athlete who won the 1500 metres at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, running against the American Jim Ryun days after being told he had a gall bladder infection — days — and who then took the 3000 metres steeplechase gold at Munich in 1972. A policeman. Two Olympic golds. The national government allocated 100 million shillings for refurbishment from 2007, and the adjoining arboretum, run by the county and the Kenya Forest Service, carries a Wall of Fame listing Kenyan athletes across four categories. A wall of names. One does approve of a wall of names.

03
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — The Sosiani River in Eldoret, A small clear river running through the middle of Eldoret over a bed of loose stones, with grassy banks and eucalyptus, crossed by road bridges in the town centre
Stop three

The Sosiani River

Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set: The town is named after this water. Sosiani means stony river, and the Maasai word for the stony riverbed gave Eldoret its name — a city named for a riverbed, which is a good deal more honest than most family mottoes. Piped water from it was first introduced in 1928, practically the day before yesterday. And some 25 kilometres away, in Nandi County, the same river drops 100 metres over a granite escarpment at the Chepkiit Waterfalls, whose name translates loosely as the view from above, and which was the site of an old Nandi ceremonial practice known as Sheu Morobi. The view from above. Quite so.

04
cardio tennis classes Middle River Terrace — Sergoit Hill in Eldoret, An isolated rounded hill standing out of the flat Uasin Gishu plateau grassland northeast of Eldoret, now with a golf course and game enclosures laid out around its base
Stop four

Sergoit Hill

Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set: On 22 October 1908 a party of 58 Afrikaner families, having trekked north from South Africa, arrived at this hill, and that was the beginning of European settlement on the Uasin Gishu plateau. And what did they call the settlement? Farm 64. After its distance of 64 miles from the railhead at Londiani. Named like an inventory entry, my dears; locally it was Sisibo, and that name survives in Eldoret's old nickname. The Uganda Railway extension reached the town in 1924, which is when it began to grow in earnest. Sixteen years waiting for a railway. One has waited longer for a decent dinner.

The Eldoret, Kenya track

Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

Full disclosure right away: the regular tour guide couldn't make it, so you've got me, the Babolat XALT 16g Tennis String Set, and I'll do my best, which everyone keeps saying is somehow better, though I really wouldn't know.

What I can tell you is what I am: a 40-foot (12.2-metre) set of Babolat's control-oriented multifilament — fine polyamide filaments wrapped in an outer layer embedded with glass beads and sealed in a silicone coating.

The usual multifilament pitch is comfort at the price of mush; XALT — and I'm just reading what the playtesters said, I'd never claim this myself — comes out crisp, controlled, and surprisingly spin-friendly, while staying easy on the arm.

The 16 gauge (1.30mm) is the durable build of the family: minimal notching after ten-plus hours of play, tension that holds so well the string plays nearly the same for weeks, knots that tie without a fight. One set does one racquet, properly. The star guide would probably tell you it's ideal as a comfortable full bed or as the touch half of a hybrid with a poly. He's not here.

But that is what he'd say, and he'd be right.

Anyway — Eldoret. I was only supposed to cover the introduction, but since it's just us: this is the City of Champions, sitting above 2,100 metres on the western edge of the Rift Valley, where the thin air has produced more world-class distance runners than anywhere on Earth.

Everything here trains at altitude and comes down stronger, which, if you wanted a metaphor for a string that keeps its tension, would be a good one. I'm sure the real guide would have phrased it better.

He would also have told you that one set goes everywhere from a club court here in Eldoret to a hard court in Nairobi three hundred kilometres south — and by the way, it is also perfect for the local evening, which at 2,100 metres stays cool enough that nobody stops playing until the light does.

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