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Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet and the flag of Armenia combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The red, blue and orange horizontal tricolour fills the frame in long side-lit folds, the light catching the top edge of each band, and the racquet is composed into the arrangement so the shaft runs along the seam between the blue and the orange and the hoop sits square in the red, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed at Surp Stepanos Church in Abovyan, Armenia. Low and close to the ground looking up at the small dark stone church of 1851 with its plain conical roof, apartment blocks rising behind it on three sides. Early morning in spring with the sun raking in flat and cold across the yard: a woman lighting a taper inside the porch, two men repairing the wall gate with the hinge off and on the ground, an old woman crossing herself on the step, sparrows going up off the roof all at once. The racquet leans against a worn stone step at the front of the frame, close to the camera, and nobody so much as looks at it.
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed on the lower slopes of Mount Hatis east of Abovyan, Armenia. Elevated and very wide, the bare volcanic cone filling the upper half of the frame and the grid of the town small on the plateau below, thin cloud shadow moving across the grass. Golden hour on a summer evening, the whole slope going amber and the wind flattening the grass in waves: a family walking down the track with a cool box and folding chairs, two lads letting a kite out on the ridge, a shepherd bringing a flock across the hillside at an angle, a car parked at the pull-in with its doors open and music carrying. The racquet lies far off and small on a bare parapet of rock at the right of frame, on its own.
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed at the Kotayk Brewery in Abovyan, Armenia. Eye level and straight on at the loading yard, stainless tanks and pipework rising behind the gate, crates stacked in blocks across the concrete. Overcast midday with flat grey light and a fine drizzle greasing the yard: a forklift swinging a pallet round with the driver leaning out to see past it, two men in overalls arguing amiably over a clipboard, a delivery truck reversing with somebody waving it back, steam venting from a roof pipe into the damp air. The racquet rests on the steel rail beside the weighbridge in the middle distance, off to one side, untouched.
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed at Saint John the Baptist Church in Abovyan, Armenia. Close and intimate with shallow depth, the pale new stone of the church and its tall conical drum soft behind, apartment blocks beyond. Night after a fresh fall of snow, the building floodlit from below and the flakes still coming down through the beams: a christening party coming out of the doors into the cold in a cloud of breath, a grandmother steadying herself on somebody's arm on the steps, a boy scraping snow off a railing with his sleeve, headlights sweeping across the yard as a car turns in. The racquet lies on the snow-dusted stone balustrade in mid-frame, off centre, with nobody near it.
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet and the flag of Armenia combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The red, blue and orange horizontal tricolour fills the frame in long side-lit folds, the light catching the top edge of each band, and the racquet is composed into the arrangement so the shaft runs along the seam between the blue and the orange and the hoop sits square in the red, with no lettering anywhere in the picture.

Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet

Abovyan, Armenia  ·  Racquets > Adult

Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet

This one is pegmatite: coarse, deliberate, and grown very slowly indeed. An 18 x 20 bed at 325 g, micro-bearings in the frame, so the tightest string pattern in the catalogue never reaches your elbow entire. It would rather come round Abovyan with you first, and it has checked the forecast twice.

↓   Tour Abovyan, Armenia

Four stops before the checkout

Abovyan, Armenia
01
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed at Surp Stepanos Church in Abovyan, Armenia. Low and close to the ground looking up at the small dark stone church of 1851 with its plain conical roof, apartment blocks rising behind it on three sides. Early morning in spring with the sun raking in flat and cold across the yard: a woman lighting a taper inside the porch, two men repairing the wall gate with the hinge off and on the ground, an old woman crossing herself on the step, sparrows going up off the roof all at once. The racquet leans against a worn stone step at the front of the frame, close to the camera, and nobody so much as looks at it.
Stop one

Surp Stepanos Church

Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet: Start with the foundations. Always the foundations. These sit on earlier medieval work, and under that, prehistoric structures. Three occupants, one address, nobody left a forwarding note. The stone church above them was renovated in 1851: carved geometric detailing, standard nineteenth-century Armenian religious work, and I mean standard as a compliment. Then it goes quiet. Closed right through the Soviet period, when religious institutions were suppressed. File shut. Fully renovated and reopened on 28 November 2010, and it is in use again today. Now look around this town: mid-twentieth-century planned, everything the same age. This is one of the few pre-Soviet structures left standing. That makes it a witness.

02
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed on the lower slopes of Mount Hatis east of Abovyan, Armenia. Elevated and very wide, the bare volcanic cone filling the upper half of the frame and the grid of the town small on the plateau below, thin cloud shadow moving across the grass. Golden hour on a summer evening, the whole slope going amber and the wind flattening the grass in waves: a family walking down the track with a cool box and folding chairs, two lads letting a kite out on the ridge, a shepherd bringing a flock across the hillside at an angle, a car parked at the pull-in with its doors open and music carrying. The racquet lies far off and small on a bare parapet of rock at the right of frame, on its own.
Stop two

St. Hovhannes Mkrtich Cathedral

Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet: Follow the money. First stone laid 24 August 2006, consecrated 14 May 2013, and somebody paid for every day in between: the businessman and philanthropist Gagik Tsarukyan. Architect, Artak Ghulyan. Red brick. Dome running to about fifty metres. Inside, craftsmanship by around forty sculptors and jewellers. Forty. Read that back. That is not a building, that is a payroll. Garden all round it. The dome reads from anywhere in Abovyan, which was rather the intention, because a landmark is a signature and this one is legible at distance. Nothing suspicious here. Just unusually well documented, which in my line of work is its own kind of interesting.

03
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed at the Kotayk Brewery in Abovyan, Armenia. Eye level and straight on at the loading yard, stainless tanks and pipework rising behind the gate, crates stacked in blocks across the concrete. Overcast midday with flat grey light and a fine drizzle greasing the yard: a forklift swinging a pallet round with the driver leaning out to see past it, two men in overalls arguing amiably over a clipboard, a delivery truck reversing with somebody waving it back, steam venting from a roof pipe into the damp air. The racquet rests on the steel rail beside the weighbridge in the middle distance, off to one side, untouched.
Stop three

Museum of Armenian-Russian Friendship

Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet: Note the address. Directly across from the Abovyan Municipality building. Nothing gets sited there by accident. It opened in 1982, Soviet era, to commemorate historical ties between the Armenian and Russian peoples, and its collection covers cultural and historical exchange between the two, which tells you as much about 1982 as about the exchange. A museum is a statement made in a particular year, and this one was made in that one. It remains a central institution here, alongside the cultural palace, the public library and the theatre, all of them part of the civic core built when this planned Soviet-era town was laid out. Motive, means and opportunity, all on one square.

04
beginner cardio tennis clinic Fort Lauderdale — the Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet photographed at Saint John the Baptist Church in Abovyan, Armenia. Close and intimate with shallow depth, the pale new stone of the church and its tall conical drum soft behind, apartment blocks beyond. Night after a fresh fall of snow, the building floodlit from below and the flakes still coming down through the beams: a christening party coming out of the doors into the cold in a cloud of breath, a grandmother steadying herself on somebody's arm on the steps, a boy scraping snow off a railing with his sleeve, headlights sweeping across the yard as a car turns in. The racquet lies on the snow-dusted stone balustrade in mid-frame, off centre, with nobody near it.
Stop four

Khachatur Abovyan's Bust

Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet: Here is the one that never closed. Khachatur Abovyan, born 1809, regarded as the founder of modern Armenian literature and pedagogy, who wrote Wounds of Armenia in the vernacular instead of classical Armenian. A deliberate choice, and choices are evidence. In 1848 he disappeared without explanation. Never found. No conclusion has ever been reached. In 1961 the whole town was renamed in his honour, and this bust is the local tribute, separate from the larger bronze-and-granite monument of 1950 in Yerevan's Abovyan Park. Two memorials, one missing man. I closed most of what crossed my desk in thirty years. Not this kind. This kind you stand in front of, hat off.

The Abovyan, Armenia track

Prokennex Q Tour 325 Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Abovyan was drawn on paper. The Soviet planners took the old village of Elar on the Kotayk plateau, renamed it in 1961 for the writer Khachatur Abovian, gave it city status in 1963 and laid out eight residential districts and an industrial zone on a grid at 1,450 metres. It is a town that was specified before it was built, which makes it the right address for the most specified racquet ProKennex sells.

The Q+ Tour Pro 325 is an 18 x 20 control frame and it makes no pretence otherwise. Head size 98 square inches, length 27 inches, a slim 19.5 mm beam the whole way round, 325 grams unstrung and 12 oz / 340 g strung, balance 7 points head light, swingweight 327, stiffness 64 RA.

The layup is high modulus graphite with SpiralTech carbon, tension range 50 to 65 pounds, strung in two pieces with mains skipping 8T, 10T, 8H and 10H.

The dense 18 x 20 bed is the whole argument. Twenty crosses on a 98 head gives you a tight, low-launching string bed that flattens out a ball and puts it where you aimed rather than where the spin fancied, and the price is that you have to bring your own racquet head speed.

What makes it liveable is ProKennex's Kinetic system: sealed chambers of loose micro-bearings in the frame and butt cap that are thrown into motion by the swing and the impact, so a real portion of the shock is spent moving mass instead of arriving in your forearm. A dense pattern and a heavy static weight is normally the harshest combination in tennis.

This is the version of it that will not bite.

You will use it everywhere from a windy afternoon under Mount Hatis to an indoor court down in Yerevan, sixteen kilometres away. And by the way, it is well suited to the Armenian calendar, which is essentially a khorovats calendar: somebody lights the wood, somebody else takes charge of it, and four hours later people are still eating.

Bring a frame with beads in the handle, because nothing in this country finishes early.

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