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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis in 33304 — the Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set combined with the national flag of Australia
cardio tennis in 33304 — Fremantle Prison in Fremantle, A long austere limestone building painted white, with rows of small barred windows behind a high wall and gatehouse, enclosing bare gravel yards and tiers of iron-railed cell landings inside
cardio tennis in 33304 — The Round House in Fremantle, A squat twelve-sided limestone building with a low pitched roof and a small central courtyard, standing on a rocky limestone bluff above the harbour with a tunnel cut through the cliff beneath it
cardio tennis in 33304 — Fremantle Markets in Fremantle, A large Victorian brick market hall with arched windows and a decorated parapet on a street corner, its interior packed with stalls of fruit, flowers, clothing and crafts under an iron-trussed roof
cardio tennis in 33304 — WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, A long limestone commissariat building on the waterfront, its high interior hall dominated by the reconstructed dark timber stern section of a seventeenth-century Dutch ship rising through two levels
cardio tennis in 33304 — the Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set combined with the national flag of Australia

Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set

Fremantle, Australia  ·  Strings > 16g

Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set

This pickled everyday gut. Solid nylon centre, wrapped outer filaments, one 40-foot cut at the hard-wearing 1.30 mm: structure pretending to be a decoration, which I respect. It would very much like to take you round Fremantle's limestone gaol and its twelve-sided lockup before it is fitted.

↓   Tour Fremantle, Australia

Four stops before the checkout

Fremantle, Australia
01
cardio tennis in 33304 — Fremantle Prison in Fremantle, A long austere limestone building painted white, with rows of small barred windows behind a high wall and gatehouse, enclosing bare gravel yards and tiers of iron-railed cell landings inside
Stop one

Fremantle Prison

Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set: Ask yourself who benefits. Western Australia says it has a labour shortage, requests transportation, and then — convenient, isn't it — has the convicts build their own prison, 1852 to 1859. Nobody talks about that. And it ran continuously until 1991, the last nineteenth-century prison still in use in Australia. Cells about two metres by one and a half. Floggings until 1943. Forty-three hangings, the last one in 1964. Those are the official numbers, and the official numbers are bad enough. A riot in 1988, hostages taken, fires set, and suddenly closure moves right up the agenda. Inmate artwork is still on the cell walls, including a series by the Aboriginal artist Revel Cooper. UNESCO listed it in 2010, one of eleven convict sites.

02
cardio tennis in 33304 — The Round House in Fremantle, A squat twelve-sided limestone building with a low pitched roof and a small central courtyard, standing on a rocky limestone bluff above the harbour with a tunnel cut through the cliff beneath it
Stop two

The Round House

Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set: They call it the Round House. It has twelve sides. Twelve. I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying it's the oldest surviving building in Western Australia, finished 1831, under two years after the Swan River Colony was founded — first thing they built was a gaol, and I'd like that entered into the record. Henry Willey Reveley designed it: eight cells round a small central yard. Underneath runs the Whalers Tunnel, cut through the limestone in 1837 so the whaling company could get from town to Bathers Beach. Allegedly just for whaling. The colony's first legal hanging was here in 1844. Time ball and cannon on the roof from 1900, and they still fire the gun at one o'clock.

03
cardio tennis in 33304 — Fremantle Markets in Fremantle, A large Victorian brick market hall with arched windows and a decorated parapet on a street corner, its interior packed with stalls of fruit, flowers, clothing and crafts under an iron-trussed roof
Stop three

Shipwrecks Museum

Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set: Now. The 1850s Commissariat building holds the finest collection of Dutch East India Company material outside the Netherlands — outside the Netherlands, in Fremantle, and nobody finds that odd? The centrepiece is the reconstructed timber hull section of the Batavia, wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos in 1629. What followed was a mutiny and the murder of well over a hundred survivors, one of the darkest episodes in maritime history, and that is documented, not rumoured. The stone portico she was carrying to Batavia is here too. And this coast, sitting on the route from the Cape to the Indies, took the Zuytdorp, the Zeewijk, the Vergulde Draeck. Museum's got them all. Follow the shipping lanes.

04
cardio tennis in 33304 — WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, A long limestone commissariat building on the waterfront, its high interior hall dominated by the reconstructed dark timber stern section of a seventeenth-century Dutch ship rising through two levels
Stop four

Fremantle Markets

Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set: Opened 1897 — and check the timing, because timing is everything. The goldfields boom is on, C.Y. O'Connor is building the inner harbour, Fremantle becomes the colony's main port, and up goes a brick and iron hall on the corner of South Terrace and Henderson Street. Coincidence? Money, is what that is. It has run as a market almost continuously ever since, except — and here's the gap nobody explains at parties — it was shut from 1950 to 1975. Twenty-five years. Then back. Around a hundred and fifty stalls now: produce, crafts, secondhand, food. Heritage listed, and the streets round it are one of Australia's best-preserved port townscapes. Wink.

The Fremantle, Australia track

Head Synthetic Gut 16g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

A hat is a structure pretending to be a decoration. So is a string bed. Both are built from a firm core and a soft outer layer, and both are judged entirely on how they sit.

This is a single 40-foot (12 m) set of Head Synthetic Gut, 16 gauge / 1.30 mm — solid nylon core, wrapped outer filaments, the most reliable everyday material in tennis. It is soft on the arm, generous with depth, and priced so that restringing three or four times a year is a decision rather than an event.

The 1.30 mm gauge is the hard-wearing one; if you want more feel and less life, the 17 exists. String it at your usual tension and it will hold its shape the way a good felt holds a brim.

Fremantle is where I would source my limestone if hats were made of it, because Fremantle is limestone and the whole town is wearing it.

Fremantle Prison is a long austere block of it, whitewashed, with rows of small barred windows behind a high wall and gatehouse, built by convict labour after the Swan River Colony asked for transportation to supply workers, and used for well over a century as an imperial convict establishment and then the state gaol.

The cell blocks, chapels, gatehouse, yards and the tunnels dug beneath to supply water are largely intact. It closed after a riot and fire, and it is on the UNESCO list with the other Australian convict sites.

On Arthur Head above the harbour sits the Round House, which is not round: a squat twelve-sided limestone building with eight cells and a keeper's room around a small central courtyard, the oldest surviving building in Western Australia, put up as a gaol before transportation even began, with a tunnel driven through the cliff beneath it to bring whalers up from the beach.

The time ball and cannon still go daily. On the waterfront, the 1850s Commissariat building holds the Shipwrecks Museum and the finest collection of Dutch East India Company material outside the Netherlands, centred on the reconstructed timber stern of the Batavia, wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos in 1629, standing several storeys tall in a dark hall.

And at the head of the café strip, the Fremantle Markets fill a Victorian brick hall of arched windows and iron trusses, opened in the gold-rush boom and still, at weekends, the busiest room in town.

You will string this set everywhere from a hard court in Fremantle to an indoor hall in Perth, half an hour up the river, and by the way, it is also perfect for a Sunday working the aisles of the markets afterwards, where structure and decoration are sold at the same stall and nobody minds which is which.

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