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

beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet and the flag of Nigeria combined by the model into one photoreal composition. The vertical green-white-green tricolour fills the frame, the two outer green bands deep and the central white band bright, the cloth lifted and lit from behind so the folds glow at the edges, and the junior racquet is composed into the arrangement so its frame and the white central band run as a single line, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at the Ewi's Palace in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. The walled palace compound with its wide ceremonial forecourt, carved posts and painted gateway, camera low near the swept red earth looking up at the gate. Early morning, hard raking light and long shadows: drummers warming up under the wall, palace attendants in wrappers carrying stools out to the forecourt, a small crowd gathering for a chieftaincy greeting, dust lifting where a broom is working. The junior racquet leans against a worn step in the near foreground, nobody touching it.
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at Fajuyi Memorial Park in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. A triangular public park with a fountain running, a tower, mown lawns and a children's playground laid out around a grave. Eye level, straight on, bright hard midday under a high sun: the fountain throwing spray, schoolchildren in uniform being lined up for a photograph by a teacher, a groundsman edging a border, two students revising on a bench. The racquet rests along the back of a park bench in the middle distance off to one side, ignored by everyone in the park.
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at Erekesan Market in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. Dense roofed stalls and coloured umbrellas packed beside the palace wall, mounds of yam and cassava, woven baskets and stacked bolts of cloth, shot from an upper window looking down so the market fills the frame and the racquet is small. Overcast grey light with rain starting, plastic sheets going up: a trader weighing yams on a hand scale, a woman balancing a basin on her head cutting through the crowd, a barrow being shoved along a wet aisle, children sheltering under an awning. The racquet lies flat on the corner of a market counter far below, unnoticed.
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at the Cathedral Church of Emmanuel in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. A large Anglican cathedral with a broad pale facade and a tall square tower above a wide swept forecourt, shot close and intimate with shallow depth from the forecourt edge. Warm evening after sunset, floodlights on the tower and lamps strung across the forecourt: an evening service letting out, a choir in robes still singing on the steps, a family greeting each other mid-embrace, hawkers setting up under the lights. The racquet rests across the arm of a plastic chair stacked at the forecourt edge, touched by nobody.
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet and the flag of Nigeria combined by the model into one photoreal composition. The vertical green-white-green tricolour fills the frame, the two outer green bands deep and the central white band bright, the cloth lifted and lit from behind so the folds glow at the edges, and the junior racquet is composed into the arrangement so its frame and the white central band run as a single line, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.

Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet

Ado Ekiti, Nigeria  ·  Racquets > Junior

Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet

This is a 23-inch, 215-gram aluminium starter frame with a 96 in² head, and it is the racquet on which a six-year-old finally middles the ball. Now — attention, please. No wallets appear before Ado Ekiti has been toured on foot; a man lies buried in a park here with something to teach every one of us.

↓   Tour Ado Ekiti, Nigeria

Four stops before the checkout

Ado Ekiti, Nigeria
01
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at the Ewi's Palace in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. The walled palace compound with its wide ceremonial forecourt, carved posts and painted gateway, camera low near the swept red earth looking up at the gate. Early morning, hard raking light and long shadows: drummers warming up under the wall, palace attendants in wrappers carrying stools out to the forecourt, a small crowd gathering for a chieftaincy greeting, dust lifting where a broom is working. The junior racquet leans against a worn step in the near foreground, nobody touching it.
Stop one

Ewi's Palace (Afin Ewi)

Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet: Let me ask you something. How far are you willing to travel for the thing you are building? Because according to oral history the Ewi's ancestors migrated westward out of the Benin forests, and the first Ewi, Oba Awamaro, established the dynasty right here at Ado-Ekiti around 1310 — and it is still standing. Still. This is the traditional seat of the Ewi, the paramount ruler of Ado-Ekiti and of the Ekiti people. And here is the part I want you to sit with: in earlier centuries this palace was built of mud. Mud! And successive Ewis rebuilt it, in stages, one generation handing the work to the next, right down to the major restoration carried out under the current Ewi, Oba Rufus Adeyemo Adejugbe, Aladesanmi III, who has occupied this throne for more than three decades. Three decades of showing up. It stands adjacent to Erekesan Market, Oja Oba, in the centre of the city — the throne and the people, one wall apart. You can build something that outlives you. Somebody standing here already did.

02
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at Fajuyi Memorial Park in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. A triangular public park with a fountain running, a tower, mown lawns and a children's playground laid out around a grave. Eye level, straight on, bright hard midday under a high sun: the fountain throwing spray, schoolchildren in uniform being lined up for a photograph by a teacher, a groundsman edging a border, two students revising on a bench. The racquet rests along the back of a park bench in the middle distance off to one side, ignored by everyone in the park.
Stop two

Fajuyi Memorial Park

Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet: I am going to speak plainly at this one. Lieutenant Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi was a native of this city, born on 26 June 1926, and he served as military governor of Nigeria's Western Region following the January 1966 coup. During the countercoup of 29 July 1966, the Head of State, Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, was his houseguest at the Government House in Ibadan. Fajuyi refused to abandon him, and he was killed alongside him. That is the whole of it, and it does not need anything added by me. The park his city raised in his memory holds a monument to his life, together with a fountain, a children's playground, a mini-museum and archival centre, and recreational facilities, and it serves today as a public green space in Ado Ekiti. Children play here now. Let us stand quietly for a moment before we go on.

03
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at Erekesan Market in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. Dense roofed stalls and coloured umbrellas packed beside the palace wall, mounds of yam and cassava, woven baskets and stacked bolts of cloth, shot from an upper window looking down so the market fills the frame and the racquet is small. Overcast grey light with rain starting, plastic sheets going up: a trader weighing yams on a hand scale, a woman balancing a basin on her head cutting through the crowd, a barrow being shoved along a wet aisle, children sheltering under an awning. The racquet lies flat on the corner of a market counter far below, unnoticed.
Stop three

Erekesan Market (Oja Oba)

Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet: What does consistency actually look like? I will show you. Erekesan Market — Oja Oba, the king's market — is the largest and oldest trading market in Ado-Ekiti, believed to have operated for more than a century as the city grew up around it. The smaller neighbourhood markets in this city open on rotating days. Not this one. Erekesan trades daily. Every single day. And it has traditionally closed for one reason only, the death of a reigning Ewi — so hear what that means: this market keeps its commitments better than almost anyone you have ever met. It stands adjacent to the palace of the Ewi, which is how Yoruba towns are laid out, the principal market in the vicinity of the ruler's palace as a symbol of royal authority. Traders and customers come from right across Ekiti State to be here. Now ask yourself honestly, my friends: what in your own life shows up like Erekesan?

04
beginner tennis classes in Fort Lauderdale — the Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet photographed at the Cathedral Church of Emmanuel in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. A large Anglican cathedral with a broad pale facade and a tall square tower above a wide swept forecourt, shot close and intimate with shallow depth from the forecourt edge. Warm evening after sunset, floodlights on the tower and lamps strung across the forecourt: an evening service letting out, a choir in robes still singing on the steps, a family greeting each other mid-embrace, hawkers setting up under the lights. The racquet rests across the arm of a plastic chair stacked at the forecourt edge, touched by nobody.
Stop four

Christ's School, Ado Ekiti

Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet: Somebody always has to go first. Look up at that hill and understand that before 1933 there was no secondary school in Ekiti at all — none — until Archdeacon Henry Dallimore founded this one as a Church Missionary Society institution. The first. The Ewi of Ado-Ekiti donated the land on Agidimo Hill, and the school moved onto its permanent campus there on 10 September 1936. That June, Governor Sir Bernard Bourdillon presided over the commissioning of the new premises and gave the institution the name it still carries today. Dallimore served as its first High Master, with J. A. I. Falope — later a bishop, note that, later a bishop — as First Master. It was upgraded to full secondary status in 1942 and it remains one of Nigeria's noted heritage schools. So who, in your street, in your family, is waiting for somebody to be the first? Could it be you? I rather think it could.

The Ado Ekiti, Nigeria track

Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

<p>A 23-inch frame is a specific tool for a specific stage, and getting the stage right matters more than getting the brand right. The Diadem Super 23 is 23 inches long with a 96 square inch head, weighs 7.5 ounces or 215 grams, and balances 2 points head light at 290mm. It is strung 16 x 19 and comes pre-strung with synthetic gut, so it plays out of the box.

The frame is aluminium — which is exactly what it should be at this size, because aluminium survives being dropped, dragged along a fence and left in the back of a car, and a graphite layup at this price does not.

Grip size is G0, four inches around, sized for a child's hand rather than shrunk down from an adult's.</p>
<p>Who it is for: roughly ages six to eight, the years when a player learns that a ball can be struck rather than swiped at.

The 96 square inch head gives a beginner a sweet spot they can actually find, the 215 grams lets them swing the frame rather than be swung by it, and the head-light balance keeps the tip from dropping through contact. If your child is swinging late, is dragging the tip, or is holding the throat to get through a rally, the frame is too long.

That is the test, not their birthday.</p>
<p>Ado Ekiti is a good place to argue for starting early.

Ekiti State calls itself the Land of Honour and Integrity and has built a genuine reputation on schooling — Ekiti State University, a federal polytechnic and Afe Babalola University are all here — and a city that takes education this seriously does not need convincing that the first racquet in a pair of hands is not a toy.

This one will do the school court, the compound, the churchyard and the tarmac outside the market. And by the way, at 455 metres up, Ado Ekiti runs from about 17°C to about 32°C across the year, so a light frame and a shady hour after four o'clock is the honest way to keep a six-year-old playing rather than complaining.</p>
<p>Diadem Super 23 Junior Tennis Racquet</p>

Buy on Amazon

Related Products

Related products

Scroll to Top