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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — the Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine combined with the national flag of Colombia
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — Cristo Rey in Cali, White concrete statue of Christ with outstretched arms, about 26 metres tall, on the Cerro de los Cristales hill west of Cali
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — Iglesia La Ermita in Cali, Small blue-and-white neo-Gothic church with a single tall spire beside the Cali river in the city centre
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — El Gato del Río in Cali, Large bronze cat sculpture on the north bank of the Cali river, surrounded by a group of painted decorated companion cat sculptures
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — Iglesia de San Antonio in Cali, Whitewashed colonial chapel of 1747 on a grassy hilltop park in the Barrio San Antonio, overlooking central Cali
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — the Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine combined with the national flag of Colombia

Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine

Cali, Colombia  ·  Ball Machines > Spinning Wheel

Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine

This is the fully programmable one — 150 balls, twelve custom six-shot drills, electronic elevation to 60 degrees and a remote so you need never leave the baseline. It thinks in proportions. Which is why the tour of Cali comes first: the concrete Christ, the bronze river cat, and the chapel of the sugar cane.

↓   Tour Cali, Colombia

Four stops before the checkout

Cali, Colombia
01
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — Cristo Rey in Cali, White concrete statue of Christ with outstretched arms, about 26 metres tall, on the Cerro de los Cristales hill west of Cali
Stop one

Cristo Rey

Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine: Everybody has water? Everybody has a hat? It is a hill, and hills are where preparation goes to be judged. That is Cristo Rey: twenty-six metres for the figure alone, more once you count the pedestal, erected in the early 1950s to mark fifty years since the end of Colombia's War of a Thousand Days, which ran from 1899 to 1902. The sculptor was an Italian, Alideo Tazzioli. The hill is named for its quartz — I know that only because I read the whole leaflet twice on the bus, as one should. And note that it commemorates the peace, not the war. People get that backwards. Granola bar? I have nine.

02
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — Iglesia La Ermita in Cali, Small blue-and-white neo-Gothic church with a single tall spire beside the Cali river in the city centre
Stop two

Iglesia La Ermita

Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine: Neo-Gothic, twentieth century, and it exists because of the worst category of supply problem: the 1925 earthquake damaged the much older chapel that stood here, and you cannot pack a spare church. This blue-and-white one with the single tall spire replaced it, its designers taking their cues from northern European cathedrals, which in this heat is a bold choice and I respect it enormously. Inside is a venerated colonial image known as the Lord of the Sugar Cane — cane country, cane devotion, entirely sensible. Take a bottle in with you. It is cooler under that roof, but it is not as much cooler as you are hoping.

03
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — El Gato del Río in Cali, Large bronze cat sculpture on the north bank of the Cali river, surrounded by a group of painted decorated companion cat sculptures
Stop three

El Gato del Río

Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine: Three tonnes of bronze cat, give or take, installed in 1996 by the artist Hernando Tejada, who died the following year — so he saw it standing, but not for long. And here is the inventory problem I genuinely cannot stop turning over: years afterwards the city commissioned a whole company of she-cats to keep him company on this bank, each one decorated by a different artist, and the number of them has changed over time. So the count is not fixed. I will not give you a figure I would have to correct later; an out-of-date number is worse than none at all. Take a mint, walk the riverbank, and meet them all, whatever 'all' currently amounts to.

04
cardiovascular clinics Fort Lauderdale — Iglesia de San Antonio in Cali, Whitewashed colonial chapel of 1747 on a grassy hilltop park in the Barrio San Antonio, overlooking central Cali
Stop four

Iglesia de San Antonio

Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine: Built in 1747, whitewashed, colonial, sitting on a grassy hilltop park above the old town in the Barrio San Antonio — and note the siting, because that is not symbolism, that is airflow. A breezy hill in this climate is the eighteenth-century equivalent of packing a second shirt. Inside, look up: the ceiling is mudejar-influenced carpentry, a Spanish-Islamic woodworking tradition that reached the Andes by way of Andalusia, which means somebody carried a technique across an ocean and landed it intact. That is the best-packed thing in Cali. Sit in the park a while. I have sunscreen. I have three sunscreens, and one of them is for you.

The Cali, Colombia track

Lobster Elite Grand Five LE Tennis Ball Machine

Written for this world alone.

Anyone can sell you an ingredient. What you are paying me for is the blend — the order, the proportion, the moment each thing goes in. A machine that merely throws balls is an ingredient. This one is a sauce.

The Elite Grand Five LE sits at the top of the Elite line and it is fully programmable. Twelve pre-loaded drills and twelve custom drills of six shots each, so you can build a genuine pattern — wide forehand, deep backhand, short ball, lob — and have it repeat exactly.

Ball speed runs 35 to 80 mph, feed rate 2 to 9 seconds, and elevation is electronic from 0 to 60 degrees, which takes you from a skidding drive to an overhead without a walk to the net. Oscillation is random horizontal, random vertical, or fully random, with topspin and backspin dialled in as you please.

The reversible hopper holds 150 balls, the machine weighs about 44 lb, and the rechargeable battery gives four to six hours. A 20-function remote runs all of it from the baseline.

Cali is the correct city for a machine about blending, and I decline to be argued out of that.

Salsa is a blend by name and by nature, Cali has called itself the world capital of it for decades, and the valley around the city is sugar-cane country — which is why the whitewashed colonial chapel of San Antonio, built in 1747 on its breezy hill, guards a devotion known as the Lord of the Sugar Cane.

Correction: the siting is practical, though every guide insists it is symbolic. I withdraw my certainty and retain the parenthesis.

You will run this machine everywhere from a private lesson where one pattern repeats forty times to a squad session where nobody knows what is coming next, and it is also perfect for an early hour on a court beneath Cristo Rey, before the Cali afternoon makes a 9-second feed rate sound generous.

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