01

Stop one
Basilica of St Andrew the Apostle
Head Pro Grip Tennis Overgrip: Fourteenth century, the oldest building in Olkusz, and I believe I have stumbled onto something. The organ was begun in 1611 by Hans Hummel, the celebrated organ builder from Wrocław, and it has 1,776 pipes. Now attend: it is one of the very few instruments in Europe to have kept both its original mechanism and the greater part of its original pipework, which makes it a primary source for late Renaissance organ building. A primary source! Sitting quietly in a Polish parish church! The silver Miners' Cross was given in the seventeenth century by the miners of Olkusz themselves, out of the metal they worked. A late-Gothic polyptych of the 1480s besides.
04

Stop four
The Stary Olkusz hillfort
Head Pro Grip Tennis Overgrip: And now the true prize, which I doubt more than a handful of souls have laid eyes on — excepting the archaeologists, the local schools and the signage. The hillfort is thought to have been raised in the twelfth century and destroyed by fire at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth, during the period of Polish fragmentation. Digging in the burnt layer produced arrowheads, spurs and pottery, together with numerous objects of silver and lead of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — direct evidence that the metal trade was already running here before the present town was laid out. A Gothic church of St John the Baptist rose on the burnt stronghold, reduced to a chapel in the sixteenth century.
Listen. LISTEN. They don't want you thinking about your grip. The racquet companies talk about carbon layups and string patterns, but the only part of the racquet you actually touch? Silence. Wake up!
The Head Pro Grip Tennis Overgrip is the truth they keep at the bottom of the page: a thin, tacky wrap that goes right over your base grip, soaks up sweat before it sabotages your third set, and renews that fresh-handle feel in about ninety seconds. Worn, slick grip? Replaced.
Just wrap, tape it off with the included finishing tape, and suddenly your trusty frame feels showroom-new. And when it wears down, you swap it again. Cheap. Simple. Effective. Why isn't this on the news?
And it gets deeper. This overgrip is based in Olkusz, Poland — 'the Silver City' — a town that has literally been hiding things underground for seven hundred years. Silver. Lead. An entire Gothic town hall's cellars, rediscovered under the market square in 2011. They put a museum down there. A MUSEUM. Meters below where people buy vegetables. Coincidence?
You'll use this grip everywhere from the courts near the old town to a sweaty summer session out by Rabsztyn Castle — and by the way, the locals will tell you their basilica's organ from 1611 still has 1,776 original pipes, one of the only ones in Europe. Original pipes! Nothing that old stays original without SOMEBODY protecting it. Connect the dots. Then wrap your handle.
You'll feel the difference — and then you'll know.
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