01
Stop one
Central Juma Mosque
Dunlop FX 500 LS Tennis Racquet: On your right, the Central Juma Mosque on Dakhadaev Street — completed in the 1990s, modelled on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, large enough for many thousands of worshippers, funded substantially by a Turkish benefactor. Now, I want you to think about it the way I think about a starter culture. Two generations of state atheism closed almost every mosque in Dagestan. Almost every single one. So this is not a thing that survived quietly at the back of a cold larder, bubbling away untouched — this is somebody rebuilding from whatever was left, feeding it, waiting, feeding it again, and then in the 1990s producing that. A rebuilding, not a survival. Stay with the group. And I will say now, so it is out of the way, that I am extremely hungry.
02
Stop two
National Museum of Dagestan
Dunlop FX 500 LS Tennis Racquet: The National Museum of Dagestan, founded in the 1920s — archaeology, arms, textiles, all of it excellent, and I will be honest with you, I am here for the Kubachi metalwork the way I am here for the last bit of crust stuck to the pan. Kubachi is a mountain village whose silversmiths have worked for centuries, and the name, in local usage, means essentially chainmail-makers. One village. Up in the mountains. Arming and adorning an entire region. Look at the niello work — black inlay run into cut silver and held exactly on its line, the way a sauce holds when it has been reduced properly and not one minute longer. Nobody has ever hurried that. Yes, we are behind. Look at it anyway.
The FX 500 LS is the light, fast-swinging member of Dunlop's FX line — LS for the lower swingweight — and it is built for the player who wants the whole first strike available off a shorter backswing. Makhachkala understands the type.
The Dagestani capital sits on the Caspian with the limestone wall of Tarki-Tau at its back, and it has produced more champion wrestlers per square mile than almost anywhere on earth. The local view of leverage is that speed and timing beat mass, and this frame is that argument written in graphite.
Head size is 100 square inches / 645 cm², strung on a 16 mains by 19 crosses pattern (mains skip 7T, 9T, 7H and 9H; two pieces, no shared holes) open enough to let the strings move, bite and snap back. Length is a standard 27 in / 68.6 cm.
Unstrung it weighs 10.1 oz / 285 g; strung it comes to roughly 10.6 oz / 301 g and balances at 13.18 in / 33.48 cm, about 3 points head light. Swingweight is 307 — the low number the LS is named for, and the reason the frame gets round late on a fast serve.
Stiffness reads 67 RA, firm without being punishing, and the beam runs 23 mm / 26 mm / 23 mm, widest through the throat where the frame does its stability work.
The lay-up is graphite with Sonic Core in the upper hoop — a layer of BASF Infinergy at the 3 and 9 o'clock positions that absorbs impact shock — plus an anti-vibration compound through the grip and midsection.
The Power Wave grommet system runs a wave profile through the grommet strip to stiffen the centre of the stringbed, which evens out feel and power across the face rather than concentrating both in one sweet spot. Dunlop rates the power level low to medium and matches it to medium-full strokes at medium-fast swing speed. Recommended string tension is 45–65 lb.
It ships unstrung with a Dunlop Synthetic grip, in grip sizes 4 1/8, 4 1/4 and 4 3/8 (1, 2 and 3), in black and blue.
You will swing it everywhere from a windy municipal court on the Caspian shore to an indoor hall under the plateau — and by the way, at 285 grams unstrung it is light enough to carry up to the old village of Tarki and back down again without regret, which is the walk everybody here recommends and nobody warns you about.
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