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THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — the Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case combined with the national flag of Saint Lucia
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Derek Walcott Square in Castries, Small green public square in central Castries facing the cathedral, containing a very large old samaan tree and a war memorial
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Castries, Large church on the east side of Derek Walcott Square with a brick and stone exterior and a vividly painted interior of biblical murals
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Pigeon Island National Landmark and Fort Rodney in Castries, Fortified headland with a hilltop gun battery and barracks ruins at the northern tip of Saint Lucia, joined to the mainland by a man-made causeway
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Castries Central Market in Castries, Covered market on Jeremie Street by the waterfront with a distinctive orange-red corrugated iron roof on iron columns, opened in the 1890s
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — the Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case combined with the national flag of Saint Lucia

Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case

Castries, Saint Lucia  ·  Balls > Regular

Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case

This is 72 all-court training balls in one case — the plain, unglamorous quantity that keeps a coaching basket uniform instead of half dead. It checks everything twice, so you see Castries first: a square renamed in 1993, a basilica of the 1890s, and an island that stopped being one in 1972.

↓   Tour Castries, Saint Lucia

Four stops before the checkout

Castries, Saint Lucia
01
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Derek Walcott Square in Castries, Small green public square in central Castries facing the cathedral, containing a very large old samaan tree and a war memorial
Stop one

Derek Walcott Square

Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case: Put a price on this square. Go on. It has been the Place d'Armes, then Columbus Square, and then, in 1993, Derek Walcott Square — the renaming coming one year after his Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded in 1992. That is an island of this size collecting on a bet nobody off the island would have taken at any odds. Absurd price, and it came in anyway. That enormous samaan tree is routinely called four hundred years old, which is an estimate, and an estimate is what you have when nobody has counted the rings — I'll happily take the number, I just won't pretend it's a certainty. The war memorial standing over there I don't handicap at all. Some stakes are not mine to price and I know the difference.

02
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Castries, Large church on the east side of Derek Walcott Square with a brick and stone exterior and a vividly painted interior of biblical murals
Stop two

Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception

Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case: Built in the 1890s, and raised to a minor basilica in 1999, which is about as slow and patient a payout as a building can collect. But the real wager in here is on the ceiling and the walls. Dunstan St Omer painted these murals — the same Dunstan St Omer who designed the national flag of this country — and he gave the biblical figures Caribbean faces. Understand what he was staking when he did it: at the time that was not a small decision, and a man already trusted with the flag has a great deal on the table. He pushed the chips in anyway. He was right. That is the entire difference between a gambler and a fool, and it is only ever visible afterwards. Look up. That is the whole pot, on a ceiling, in a church on the east side of the square.

03
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Pigeon Island National Landmark and Fort Rodney in Castries, Fortified headland with a hilltop gun battery and barracks ruins at the northern tip of Saint Lucia, joined to the mainland by a man-made causeway
Stop three

Pigeon Island National Landmark and Fort Rodney

Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case: Here is a man who understood position. From 1778 Admiral Rodney fortified this hill and used the height to watch the French fleet down at Martinique — not guessing at them, watching them. When they moved, he moved, and in April 1782 he beat them at the Saintes. That is not luck. That is a player who has already seen the other hand before he bets, which is cheating, and which I admire without reservation. Up top you have the gun battery, and the barracks ruins scattered behind it. One correction to whatever your map says: this was a genuine island right up until 1972, when the causeway went in and joined it to the mainland for good. It has been a peninsula for over fifty years. Nobody has repainted the sign. The house never does.

04
cardiovascular lessons Fort Lauderdale — Castries Central Market in Castries, Covered market on Jeremie Street by the waterfront with a distinctive orange-red corrugated iron roof on iron columns, opened in the 1890s
Stop four

Castries Central Market

Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case: Opened in 1894, and every stall under this roof is a small daily bet — buy at dawn, sell by dusk, hope. But look up at what is holding the thing over your head: iron columns, and that orange-red corrugated iron roof, and the iron is the entire reason we are standing in a market instead of a memory, because Castries has burned. Repeatedly. The fire of 1948 took a very large share of this city centre. How large is exactly where I fold — the published figures disagree with one another and I will not stake anything on a number two sources cannot settle between them. What I will back, all day, is this roof, over these stalls, still trading on Jeremie Street by the waterfront. Buy the cocoa sticks. Ask the weight first. Always ask the weight.

The Castries, Saint Lucia track

Tecnifibre Court Tennis Ball Case

Written for this world alone.

I am going to be precise about this, because somebody has to be. A great deal of what you have read about tennis balls is approximately true, which is a polite way of saying it is wrong in the details, and with a ball the details are the product.

Tecnifibre Court comes as a full case: 24 cans, 72 pressurised balls. Not seventy, not "about six dozen" — 72. This is the everyday club and training ball, woven felt over a natural rubber core, all-court construction, built to take the volume of a coaching session rather than to be precious about it.

The case is how a busy court buys balls, because it puts the whole basket on one footing: 72 balls of the same batch, the same bounce, the same weight of felt. Coaches will tell you the fastest way to ruin a drill is a mixed basket, half of it new and lively and half of it dead, and on that point the coaches are correct. And keep the cans shut until they are needed.

A pressurised ball loses pressure from the moment the seal is broken, played or not, and that is not a rumour, it is what a sealed can is for.

Castries is my sort of town, because Castries rewards checking. The main square here has been the Place d'Armes, then Columbus Square, and since 1993 Derek Walcott Square — one year after the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded in 1992, and I would like everybody to stop using those two years interchangeably.

The samaan tree standing in it is routinely described as four hundred years old. Estimated. Nobody has counted the rings. Say approximately and I will let it go.

The corrections keep coming everywhere from the cathedral on that square to the fortified headland at the top of the island.

The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception was built in the 1890s, not the 1880s, and its murals are the work of Dunstan St Omer, who also designed the national flag, so the man painted the ceiling and the flag above your head in two different senses; it was raised to a minor basilica in 1999, and minor is part of the title, not an insult.

Pigeon Island has not been an island since the causeway of 1972, which bothers me daily. It is also perfect for anyone who thinks accuracy is fussy, because Admiral Rodney fortified that hill from 1778 precisely so he could watch the French fleet at Martinique, and in April 1782 precise observation won him a battle.

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