Four stops before the checkout

Aktau, Kazakhstan

cardio tennis class Galt Ocean Mile — the Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the Aktau lighthouse in Aktau, Kazakhstan. A red and white lighthouse standing on the flat roof of an ordinary residential apartment block in the fourth microdistrict, shot wide from the street below under hard midday winter sun and a hard blue sky, satellite dishes and drying laundry on the balconies beneath it. Residents are coming and going from the entrance — a woman with two shopping bags, a delivery man wheeling boxes on a sack truck, children kicking a ball against the gable end, an old man on a bench squinting up at the lamp. The string set rests on a low concrete ledge by the door, faintly glowing.

Stop one

Melovoy Lighthouse

Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set: A lighthouse on the roof of a block of flats. Alexandria had a wonder; Aktau had a construction budget. It went up in 1974 during the city's Soviet-era building because a freestanding tower would have cost more and taken longer, which is the least romantic sentence in maritime history. Ten metres of tower on top of ten storeys puts the light 73 metres above sea level, historically visible up to 38 kilometres out to sea. A family has traditionally lived in the top-floor apartment as keepers of it. It fell out of navigational use once ships went satellite, then was reactivated in 2021, chiefly as a tourist landmark. Fine. I concede the point: no other lighthouse comes with neighbours.

cardio tennis class Galt Ocean Mile — the Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the Eternal Flame war memorial in Aktau, Kazakhstan. A close, low view of the memorial built in the shape of a traditional Kazakh yurt, its domed roof frame dark against a heavy overcast sky, the eternal flame guttering sideways in a strong wind off the sea. Two school classes in matching scarves are laying red carnations at the base while a teacher counts them back into line, an honour guard of teenage cadets stands stiffly to one side, and an elderly woman in a headscarf steps forward alone with a single flower. The string set lies on the stone rim of the flame, softly luminous.

Stop two

Mangystau Regional Museum of Local Lore

Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set: Established 1975, named after the Kazakh writer Abish Kekilbayev, now in a modern building in Microdistrict 19A — yes, the address is a number, and yes, I have already made that joke. Grander cities have marble staircases and a queue outside. This one simply has the region. The collection runs from prehistory to the present, with an archaeology hall covering settlement from the Paleolithic through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, dioramas on geology and paleontology, displays on the nomadic life and craftsmanship of local tribes, the 1870 Adai uprising against Russian imperial rule, and a section on Kekilbayev's life and work. Here is what it does better than the famous ones: it explains the ground you are standing on.

cardio tennis class Galt Ocean Mile — the Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set photographed on the Caspian seafront promenade in Aktau, Kazakhstan. A long wide view down the rocky limestone shore trail after dark, timber handrails and ranks of benches running away into the distance, coloured lamps throwing bands of pink and blue across the ledges, the black Caspian moving below. The whole city is out for the evening — couples walking arm in arm, a group of young men filming each other on the rocks, a family eating ice cream on a bench, a jogger going through, a fisherman lifting a rod off the ledge. The string set sits on a timber rail post, glowing quietly among the coloured lights.

Stop three

Aktau Seaside Promenade (Embankment)

Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set: Roughly 1.5 kilometres of clifftop walkway, opened in 2018. I have walked longer promenades. Older ones, in cities that will not stop mentioning it. This one is wedged between a sheer cliff and the shoreline with 24 viewing platforms over the water, and in the evenings they light the cliff face in colour and throw a laser display over the sea on calm nights, which is not subtle and is not attempting to be. Since opening it has become one of Aktau's most visited public spaces and the city's principal waterfront gathering place for residents and visitors. And the Caspian it faces has no far shore to spoil it. All right. That, nobody beats.

cardio tennis class Galt Ocean Mile — the Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set photographed at the Mangyshlak Experimental Botanical Garden in Aktau, Kazakhstan. Irrigated plots and rows of hardy trees standing green inside a low wall, with bare pale stony desert visible beyond it, shot in soft golden light an hour before sunset with dust hanging in the air. Two gardeners are dragging a hose along a row and arguing about where it should go, a researcher in a sun hat kneels tagging a young shrub, and a school group trails after a guide between the beds. The string set rests on the rim of a concrete irrigation channel, faintly luminous.

Stop four

World War II Eternal Flame Memorial

Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set: I have stood at a great many of these, and I will not rank them. The Eternal Flame in Aktau commemorates the Soviet soldiers who died in the Second World War, known in this region as the Great Patriotic War. Where most cities of the former Soviet Union raised an obelisk, Aktau built the monument in the form of a traditional Kazakh yurt with the flame at its centre — the shape of a home rather than a spire. It stands along the central boulevard and remains the customary site of commemoration on Victory Day, 9 May, when wreaths are laid and residents gather at the flame. Eternal-flame monuments went up across the USSR after 1945. This one is theirs.

The Aktau, Kazakhstan track

Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

The 4S is the square one. Where the original Black Code runs a five-sided profile, this is a co-polyester monofilament drawn with four flat faces and four genuinely sharp edges, and at 16 gauge — 1.30mm — you get the fattest, most durable version of that shape Tecnifibre makes. The edges bite, the ball climbs, and the whole string bed feels firm and very direct underfoot.

Black, matte, unbothered.

Aktau will recognise the type immediately: everything worth anything out here is built square, built heavy, and built to sit in wind.
Tecnifibre put ThermoCore inside it, a multi-stage heating process that softens the core structure and takes the harshest edge off the impact shock, and the numbers they publish are specific: roughly 20% more power than Pro Red Code, around 15% more durable than the original Black Code, and the same tension maintenance as Razor Code.

Testers consistently rate it very high for spin and control and low for free power — this is a string that gives you the court, not the pace. You bring the pace.
This is the single set, 40 ft / 12.2 m, one frame's worth.

Aktau is a city that knows exactly how much of anything it has: it stands eight metres below sea level on the Mangyshlak Peninsula with about 140mm of rain a year, and it drinks the Caspian — the BN-350 reactor here ran the world's first atomic desalination plant from 1973 to 1999, turning out something in the order of 120,000 cubic metres of fresh water a day.

A city built on measured supply is the right place to buy string one set at a time.

Buy on Amazon

Burn, Laugh and Learn

THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set

Tecnifibre Black Code 4S 16g Tennis String Set