01

Stop one
Castle of the Pomeranian Dukes
Tecnifibre Fire 305S Tennis Racquet: I was around for the rebuild and I said the gothic seat was perfectly fine, but the Griffins wanted a palace, and when a dynasty has ruled Pomerania for five centuries you let it have a palace. Sixteenth century, remade in Renaissance form for the dukes of the Pomerania-Stolp line; by the seventeenth it held the last of the house, including duchess Anna von Croy, remembered as the last of the Griffins. Line extinct in 1637, castle to Brandenburg-Prussia, and then, painfully, store and barracks. Postwar restoration brought the Renaissance back. It is the Museum of Central Pomerania now, holding the world's largest collection of Witkacy, and Stanisław was always going to end up in a castle.
02

Stop two
Słupsk Town Hall
Tecnifibre Fire 305S Tennis Racquet: 1901, and I watched it go up. The town was Prussian Stolp then and doing extremely well on railways, amber-working and trade in the agricultural produce of eastern Pomerania, and the architects dressed the place in red brick neo-gothic with that slender clock tower, deliberately echoing the medieval town halls of the Hanseatic Baltic. Nobody was fooled and everybody was impressed, which was the entire idea. It survived the Second World War, after which Stolp became Polish Słupsk, its German population replaced by Polish settlers, and the building simply carried on as the seat of city government, as it still is. Climb the tower for the old town and the Słupia valley. The interiors kept their period detail.
03

Stop three
St. Mary's Church in Słupsk
Tecnifibre Fire 305S Tennis Racquet: Fourteenth century, when Stolp received its charter and grew as a trading town on the route between Gdańsk and Szczecin, and I can tell you the brick went up faster than you would credit. Massive Baltic brick gothic, and that mighty west tower served travellers as a landmark long before anyone carried a map worth reading. It was the main parish church of the burghers through the Middle Ages, went Lutheran with the Reformation in Pomerania, and returned to Catholic use after 1945 when the town became Polish. Damaged and restored more than once, including after the destruction of 1945. The medieval structure holds, and it is still the tallest historic silhouette of the old town.
04

Stop four
Mill Gate (Brama Młyńska)
Tecnifibre Fire 305S Tennis Racquet: Fourteenth century, when the whole town was ringed with walls, towers and gates and you did not get in after dark without a conversation. This gate guarded the river crossing beside the ducal castle and the town mill, controlling passage over the Słupia and the valuable water power that drove the mill wheels, and water power was the only power going. The neighbouring Castle Mill is counted among the oldest surviving industrial buildings in Poland. Most of the wall circuit came down in later centuries as the town outgrew it; the Mill Gate survived, was restored after damage in the Second World War, and now serves the Museum of Central Pomerania. Castle, mill and gate: prettiest corner then, prettiest corner now.
Shhh. One moment. … There. Did you hear that? A perfect fifth. Forgive me — old habit. I tune by ear, and I evaluate racquets the same way, which is why I can vouch for the Tecnifibre Fire 305S: this instrument is IN TUNE.
The fundamentals: a 98 square inch soundboard — head, excuse me — carrying an open 16×19 string pattern, strung to whatever pitch your game requires, at a weight of 305 grams that gives every note authority.
The voicing technology is what sold me: X-Damp filters the harsh overtones — the wolf tones, we'd say in my trade — out of every impact, while the IsoFlex system evens the response across the whole string bed, so an off-center strike doesn't play sour. The result is explosive pace, easy spin, and directional control precise enough to place a ball like a grace note.
A competitive player's instrument, concert-ready.
My workshop is in Słupsk, Poland, and I did not choose it casually: this town is one of Europe's quiet piano capitals, host to the celebrated Polish Piano Festival since 1967 — every September the young virtuosos come north and the whole town listens.
It's also a town of grander instruments: the Castle of the Pomeranian Dukes, Renaissance seat of the Griffin dynasty, which ruled Pomerania for five centuries before the line ended with duchess Anna von Croy.
You'll play this racquet everywhere from a morning hit near the Mill Gate to an evening session before a festival recital, and by the way, the local interval of choice is coffee and sernik in the old town — a chord I strike daily. Now, quiet hands. The tour has four movements. We proceed andante.
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