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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the coiled black pentagonal co-polyester set composed together with the flag of Morocco, the deep red field with its green interlaced five-pointed star filling the frame behind it and hanging almost still with one slow fold through the star's outline, low warm raking light picking out the five flat faces of the string, no lettering anywhere in the picture.
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed on the Skala de la Ville in Essaouira, Morocco, the long open gun platform on the medina's north sea wall with rows of old bronze cannon along the parapet and the Atlantic breaking white below. Blue hour before sunrise, camera low near the stone looking along the line of guns: the muezzin's call still going, two men opening the shutters of a thuya workshop in the vaults beneath, a fisherman crossing the rampart with a coil of net over one shoulder, spray coming over the wall in the wind. The string set lies close in the near foreground on a worn stone step beside a cannon carriage, untouched by anyone.
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed in a straight street of the Medina of Essaouira, Morocco, whitewashed walls and cobalt-blue shutters running away in an unusually orderly grid between pale ramparts. Hard vertical midday sun in August cutting the street into blocks of white and black shadow, camera at eye level straight down the line: a porter shoving a handcart of argan oil crates through the gap, a spice seller tipping cumin from a scoop, two women arguing pleasantly over cloth in a doorway, a boy on a bicycle with bread balanced on the handlebars. The string set sits on a low stone bench against the wall in the middle distance to the right, ignored by all of them.
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — a wide elevated view down over the fishing harbour and the Porte de la Marine at Essaouira, Morocco, the pale stone arched sea gate standing between the medina and a basin crammed rail to rail with identical cobalt-blue wooden boats. Golden hour with the light coming in flat off the Atlantic and long shadows across the quay, camera high on the rampart looking down: the fleet casting off in a slow procession for the night's fishing, crews coiling rope on the foredecks, an old man mending a net cross-legged on the stones, a queue at a grill stand with smoke going sideways. The string set sits small on the parapet in the near foreground, the harbour filling the frame.
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed close and shallow-focused on a café table at the edge of Place Moulay Hassan in Essaouira, Morocco, the wide pale square and its awnings soft behind under strings of lamps. Warm dark night in June during the Gnaoua festival, camera low and intimate: a Gnaoua group mid-performance with iron qraqeb castanets blurred by motion, a lute player leaning back, a crowd packed shoulder to shoulder and clapping on the offbeat, a waiter threading through with a tray of mint tea held over his head. The set lies on the tiled tabletop beside a glass of tea, and not one person in the square has noticed it.
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the coiled black pentagonal co-polyester set composed together with the flag of Morocco, the deep red field with its green interlaced five-pointed star filling the frame behind it and hanging almost still with one slow fold through the star's outline, low warm raking light picking out the five flat faces of the string, no lettering anywhere in the picture.

Tecnifibre Black Code 16g Tennis String Set

Essaouira, Morocco  ·  Strings > 16g

Tecnifibre Black Code 16g Tennis String Set

This is the pentagonal one — 1.28 mm of polyester under a THERMOCORE coating, for people who destroy strings and intend to carry on doing it. It is 4am, it is not sleeping, and it very much wants to march you round Essaouira right now, while the fleet goes out, because apparently neither of us is going back to bed.

↓   Tour Essaouira, Morocco

Four stops before the checkout

Essaouira, Morocco
01
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed on the Skala de la Ville in Essaouira, Morocco, the long open gun platform on the medina's north sea wall with rows of old bronze cannon along the parapet and the Atlantic breaking white below. Blue hour before sunrise, camera low near the stone looking along the line of guns: the muezzin's call still going, two men opening the shutters of a thuya workshop in the vaults beneath, a fisherman crossing the rampart with a coil of net over one shoulder, spray coming over the wall in the wind. The string set lies close in the near foreground on a worn stone step beside a cannon carriage, untouched by anyone.
Stop one

Skala de la Ville

Tecnifibre Black Code 16g Tennis String Set: If everyone can hear me. These ramparts belong to the fortified port laid out in the 1760s for the Alaouite sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah, who wanted a modern harbour to open Morocco to Atlantic trade; the design is credited to the French-trained engineer Théodore Cornut, who built the Skala de la Ville and the Skala du Port around 1760 to 1764 on European bastioned principles. The bronze guns mounted between the merlons bear Portuguese and Spanish arms. And — this is where I lose the thread every time — in 1949 Orson Welles came to the town, then called Mogador, in search of a setting for his Othello. The 1952 film opens travelling the length of this rampart.

02
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed in a straight street of the Medina of Essaouira, Morocco, whitewashed walls and cobalt-blue shutters running away in an unusually orderly grid between pale ramparts. Hard vertical midday sun in August cutting the street into blocks of white and black shadow, camera at eye level straight down the line: a porter shoving a handcart of argan oil crates through the gap, a spice seller tipping cumin from a scoop, two women arguing pleasantly over cloth in a doorway, a boy on a bicycle with bread balanced on the handlebars. The string set sits on a low stone bench against the wall in the middle distance to the right, ignored by all of them.
Stop two

Skala du Port and Bab el-Marsa

Tecnifibre Black Code 16g Tennis String Set: The same eighteenth-century scheme, in the manner of Vauban's bastioned works: two 200-metre platforms running from the Bab el-Marsa gate to the tower and on to the round Borj el-Barmil. The gate itself is built entirely of dressed stone and carries an inscription recording that it was ordered by Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah and built by his servant Ahmed Laâlaj in the year 1184 AH, which is 1770. And yes, before anyone asks, because someone always asks: the bastion has served as a film location, for Welles's Othello in 1951 and later for television productions. I am aware that is why several of you came. I forgive it.

03
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — a wide elevated view down over the fishing harbour and the Porte de la Marine at Essaouira, Morocco, the pale stone arched sea gate standing between the medina and a basin crammed rail to rail with identical cobalt-blue wooden boats. Golden hour with the light coming in flat off the Atlantic and long shadows across the quay, camera high on the rampart looking down: the fleet casting off in a slow procession for the night's fishing, crews coiling rope on the foredecks, an old man mending a net cross-legged on the stones, a queue at a grill stand with smoke going sideways. The string set sits small on the parapet in the near foreground, the harbour filling the frame.
Stop three

Île de Mogador (Îles Purpuraires)

Tecnifibre Black Code 16g Tennis String Set: Right. Script down. That islet held a Tyrian purple dye works, established around the turn of the 1st century BC and AD by Juba II, the Berber king of Mauretania, processing murex and purpura shellfish gathered from the surrounding rocks — the dye that coloured the purple stripe of Roman senatorial togas. The purple stripe. Made here. Hence Îles Purpuraires. A Roman villa has been excavated on the island, with a Roman vase and 3rd-century coinage. In 1506 Manuel I of Portugal ordered a fortress built here, the Castelo Real de Mogador; the ruined fortress, prison and mosque now visible are 19th-century. The archipelago is a reserve holding the only breeding colony of Eleonora's falcon outside the Mediterranean.

04
cardio tennis class Downtown Fort Lauderdale — the black string set photographed close and shallow-focused on a café table at the edge of Place Moulay Hassan in Essaouira, Morocco, the wide pale square and its awnings soft behind under strings of lamps. Warm dark night in June during the Gnaoua festival, camera low and intimate: a Gnaoua group mid-performance with iron qraqeb castanets blurred by motion, a lute player leaning back, a crowd packed shoulder to shoulder and clapping on the offbeat, a waiter threading through with a tray of mint tea held over his head. The set lies on the tiled tabletop beside a glass of tea, and not one person in the square has noticed it.
Stop four

Bab Doukkala

Tecnifibre Black Code 16g Tennis String Set: Composing myself. Bab Doukkala is one of the principal land gates of the walled town built for Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah in the second half of the 18th century. The sultan invited merchant families to settle in the new port and handle its Atlantic trade, among them a substantial Jewish merchant community whose quarter lies just inside this gate, and for a period Essaouira handled a large share of Morocco's foreign commerce. The medina as a whole, an unusually complete example of a planned 18th-century North African fortified town, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2001. That concludes the tour. The falcons were extra.

The Essaouira, Morocco track

Tecnifibre Black Code 16g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

Black Code was Tecnifibre's first geometric string and it still makes the case better than most of what followed.

This is the 16 gauge — 1.28 mm — a co-polyester monofilament with a pentagonal cross-section: five flat faces and five edges, and it is the edges that do the work, catching the ball on the way across the stringbed and putting revolutions on it that a round string simply cannot. Sold as a 40 ft / 12.2 m set, in black, which is where the name comes from.

Over the top sits Tecnifibre's THERMOCORE treatment, which cuts string-on-string friction. That does three useful things at once: the mains snap back into line instead of staying where the last ball shoved them, the string pulls through the frame more easily when you are stringing it, and the whole bed lasts longer than a five-sided profile has any right to.

Tecnifibre recommend tensioning between 22 and 25 kg with a maximum of 32 kg, and aim the string at heavy string-breakers — the ten-hours-a-week end of the sport.

Essaouira understands things that are cut to a shape and then hammered by the weather. The medina was laid out from 1764 by Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah, who handed the design to a French military engineer, Théodore Cornut, working on Vauban's principles — which is why an eighteenth-century Moroccan port has straight streets and a proper grid instead of a maze.

The trade wind blows onto that coast almost every afternoon of the year. Nothing survives here without an edge and a reason.

You will use this everywhere from a wind-scoured hard court on the Atlantic coast to an indoor hall in Marrakech, three hours inland — and by the way, it belongs to a city that eats late and badly slept: sardines off the grill on the quay at midnight, mint tea at one, the fishing fleet going out at four while you are still awake and pretending you are not.

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